Dear Amy: My wife’s best friend from high school, “Greg,” is gay. He and his boyfriend have been “married” several years. Now they want a child. Greg wants her to carry the baby. My wife gladly agreed.
I want my wife to stay physically faithful to me. I am outraged at Greg for even asking for such a thing as this from a married woman. I do not want her having sex with Greg, and I do not want her pregnant with his baby. She had a rough pregnancy with our daughter. I could never be comfortable being intimate with her again, knowing that she could be comparing me with Greg.
We have had fights about it. She claims it is because I am against gays, which is not true.
– Frustrated
Dear Frustrated: While I firmly believe in a woman’s right to control what she does with her own body, your wife’s choice to bear another man’s child has a potentially huge impact on your family, and she doesn’t have a right to do that.
Genetically, this baby will be your wife’s. What if there are complications, to her or the child during the pregnancy or after? Who will pay for her (and the baby’s) medical bills? What if your wife doesn’t want to give up the child once it is born, or what if she doesn’t like the way Greg and his partner are raising the child? How will all of this be explained to your daughter? How will your marriage endure? You must get your wife into a counselor’s office. You should also contact a lawyer to see what your rights and obligations are.
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Dear Amy: I’m a widow, my husband’s a widower, and we have been married for a year and a half. What should I do about the fact my husband never seems to remember or doesn’t even listen to things that I tell him about myself? These are things that are important to me. When I bring up things about my past, he has no recollection about them.
In my book, it seems that what I say just isn’t important enough for him to listen.
– Worried
Dear Worried: Uncharitably speaking, your husband could be a self-centered ignoramus. Surely you noticed this quality before you married him? But let’s be charitable. Perhaps he wants to have a new life with you.
I don’t mean to diminish your past (and your late husband), but it sounds as if your husband does. Some people aren’t comfortable dwelling anywhere except here and now. Your husband might have some discomfort over your past (or his own), so he chooses to avoid learning anything about you he doesn’t already know. It’s a shame, since the two of you are the sum total of your experiences.
Knowing you intimately will deepen his connection to you.
Perhaps you could sit together over coffee. Ask him to tell you the 10 most important things about himself. You write those down. Then you tell him the 10 most important things about you (he writes these down). It’s a game of “This is your life.”
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Dear Amy: The responses you have printed to “Samantha in Denver,” about sexual abuse, were valuable. I was sexually assaulted by a group of teen guys when I was a 9-year-old boy. I was so scared (they threatened to kill my family if I told) that I couldn’t tell my parents until after I had been through years of therapy. It’s not that my family was naive about child abuse.
My grandfather abused his daughters. In response, the family rule was that at no time was Grandpa to be left alone with any child for any reason. While my family was watching him, they failed to monitor other situations where abuse could happen.
We should educate children in age-appropriate ways about sexual abuse so that if anyone touches them inappropriately they will report it to other family members. Sexual abuse lasts a lifetime. Its wounds can heal, but the scars never go away.
– Robert in San Diego
Dear Robert: The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that one in six victims of sexual assault is under 12. I am so sorry you fall into that horrid statistic.
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