Marriage, or Jon & Kate & TLC destroy 8

The first two shots are from yesterday afternoon. The kids jumped into the little pool fully clothed. They were so cute giggling about it. They had some of their 'Big Cat' figurines in the pool with them and were playing with them. You can see them lined up along the edge of the pool. The other shot is of M working on one of his landscape plans at his drafting table.


Given the nasty state of my hormones, I’ve slept a lot less lately. I’ve also had no energy whatsoever. That translates into much more tv time than usual for me. The tv shows I enjoy most are typically educational or news, so I’ve caught more than my share of Jon & Kate Gosselin drama lately (until the FF & MJ deaths knocked these fools out of the running). I do not watch their show. I really became first aware of it on a vacation a couple of years ago. I was up late looking for something entertaining. I used to like TLC and saw a show with absolutely darling children, so I watched several episodes that night. It was a marathon.

Initially the kids were cute, and I was entertained in a very twisted way, by the way Kate repeatedly humiliated her husband. I enjoy watching deserving men suffer. After several episodes, it became much less entertaining. I was increasingly upset by the cold and rigid way she interacted with those children. I noticed that only one parent really interacted with and seemed to have a real relationship with the children, and that was the husband that Kate so delighted in humiliating and abusing (both verbally and physically)! She slapped his face on more than one occasion. Hard. The more I thought about it, I didn’t like the very personal nature of footage on these children. It was or would soon be very humiliating for 8 little sweeties. I know how painfully self-conscious children can be, starting at around 5 and steadily increasing (at least with my girls). I quit watching the show because it sickened me for many reasons, and I just didn’t feel good about watching such a dysfunctional family.

Lately they’ve hit the news and been all over the Internet in a big way with their cheating and divorce scandals. What their children haven’t already seen will be out there for their exploration, horror, and humiliation in future years. Those poor babies. I also just noticed that I typed the word ‘humiliation’ way more times than the word should be used in three paragraphs. Funny how that seems to be the ‘theme’ of their show—the one word that has to be invoked to describe that three-ring circus.

I have to say flat out, that it always pains me to have to take the man’s side rather than the woman’s, but I have to admit I’m ‘team Jon’ all the way with this one. I am for many reasons, but the most important of which is that he obviously loves those children and has been by far the best parent of the two. She’s all kinds of fucked up and so is the way she parents. My amateur opinion is that she’s a narcissist and incapable of loving others.

I really don’t care personally for either of the Gosselins and couldn’t care less if they are happy, depressed, or any other emotional state. I always have and always will believe that once you have children, their happiness is all that matters. If you can find a way to be happy while parenting your children in a way that allows them to be happy and healthy—super! That’s bonus. It’s certainly not a guarantee or a requirement. There will be time to pursue your own personal happiness once your kids are out and on their own. Until then, they are the only game in town!

I also do not take marriage lightly. The institution as manifested in the US today sucks, and I don’t personally have any respect or concern for the religious-based artifact that we call marriage in the US. I do, though, take making a commitment and a partnership that involves my children, my family, and my friends, with the utmost gravity. When I married M, I promised to enter a partnership in which we would put the emotional, physical, spiritual, and economic welfare of our children first and foremost in our lives forever. That contract had nothing to do with romance or any other feelings or deeds that occur between the two of us. I have no intention of violating that contract. Because I take it so seriously, I always pause when I hear of someone we know who is divorcing—what went wrong?, is there something that I should examine in the spirit of preventive maintenance?, is there something that I can learn that would be beneficial to our relationship?—I want it to be a learning experience.

So while I typically don’t think about or evaluate the relationship of people I don’t know, particularly celebrities, I did reflect on the Gosselin debacle. Besides the fact that they have made their lives public and anyone watching could see the train coming, I reflected for a more personal and unflattering reason. My brief night of watching Kate made my blood run cold for a very personal reason. There were things about her personality and her relationship with her husband that reminded me of myself and my past relationships. In no way are we similar in our parenting. I find everything about the way she relates to her children vile and repulsive. The way she treated her husband and other adults, I could see similarities, and I didn’t like any of them. She served as a good reminder for me of what I could be if I didn’t continue to work very hard. I spent much reflective time considering the state of my marriage and how well I was doing on my efforts to keep my inner bitch in check.

My brief exposure to Kate was really very beneficial, because it reminds me of what I never want to be again. It reminds me of how NOT to treat my family. My first reaction to almost any situation is straight-up, hardcore bitch, and I have to always be aware of that and intercept it before it comes out. It's not that way all of the time, so my self-retraining program is working slowly but surely. I check the ugliness (not always, but usually) and try to replace it with a reaction that more aligns with my conscious, higher self. I wish my unconscious, gut-reaction self would catch up though, because the constant self-editing is damn exhausting sometimes! Unchecked, I could just steamroll my way through life—a big, bratty bitch. I choose not to be that for many reasons. The main one, though, is that I could not respect myself if I behaved that way. M. has never really tolerated that from me, and I appreciated that early on in our relationship. It helped me to grow and mature.

Since I’ve only been married once, (and you can take this one to the bank: I will only ever be married once) I can only speak for what works for me, but I tend to think it’s just common sense stuff that holds true in most cases. Things that are not enough to keep a marriage solid: love, romance, infatuation, great sex, children. I don’t think a couple should ever get married when they’re googly eyed. Marriage should be approached as would a business partnership—logically, practically, with an unemotional evaluation of how well the partnership functions. It is an economic contract in the same way that creating a corporation is and should be evaluated with an equally cold eye.

Our marriage is not perfect. We have high points and low points. We have strengths as a couple and weaknesses as a couple. Our marriage is solid, though, and I am as happily married as I am capable of being. I love my husband, but that really doesn’t have much to do with a successful marriage. (I know, I know, this is just killing all the die-hard romantics out there!)

The reasons our marriage is successful include the following: 1. We are good partners. We balance each other out, making the whole greater than the parts. We make a good team, and it's a bonus that we manage to have fun together too. 2. Our first and foremost priority is our children. I know that traditional thinking, particularly in the religious community, states that you should place your spouse before your children. That sickens me. That smacks of selfish-ass men trying to make sure they aren’t superseded by their children. It sets up the potential for competition between the husband and the children for the wife’s attention/affection and time. It creates the potential for resentment. It creates the nightmares of the children being abused—whether emotionally, physically, or sexually, and the spouse remaining in the marriage. Our children are our first priority. There is no resentment from either of us when we place our kids’ best interests before ourselves and each other. I love him more for putting my children and their happiness first. I love that when he has unexpected free time, he looks to spend it with our kids before he even thinks of me. How could you not love and respect someone forever, when they live their entire lives in such a way that honors and nurtures your children?! I would be disgusted and horrified by a husband who put me before the children. I think that is one of the most unhealthy and dangerous things one can do in a marriage! If my husband wasn’t a terrific father and good for my kids in every way, he simply would not be my husband. And finally and most importantly for me…3. Respect. I respect my husband, and I’ve learned that for me, that is the single most important factor in the success of any relationship. I respected him before we were married and have grown to respect him more throughout the years. We all have different criteria in place for what makes us respect a person. While the criteria may vary, I don’t see any way that a marriage can endure a lack of respect. I wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who didn’t respect me as a person, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want that in a spouse!

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings on marriage, and some of them are quite conflicting. I could go on another 20 pages on marriage. As a radical feminist, I have more issues with and aught against marriage than most. I’m not great at it. It’s not a natural state for me. I will always believe that my husband is a better a husband than I am at being a wife. I learned quite early on that I couldn’t manipulate and control M the way I could with all the others. He knew exactly what I was when he got me though, and still signed on the line.

I do have to say, though, that given my very strong personality and extremely outspoken nature, people often assume that I ‘wear the pants’ in the family. In a sense, that’s right. I do wear the pants, but so does he. He may look passive, but he does whatever the hell he wants. He has no problem simply ignoring me and proceeding or even laughing in my face (which can be really infuriating sometimes!), but he is most definitely NOT my bitch. Our marriage wouldn’t survive if he was. (Maybe if Jon hadn’t let Kate turn him into her bitch, they would be able to provide a loving, functional set of parents for their god-awful-size family. They’re not just breeders—they’re stupid breeders. YUK!)

So, husband, this is about as close as you’re going to get to a romantic love letter from me. I know that you will reciprocate this very romantic gesture by not blowing your stinky belches in my face for a night or two. We are a lucky pair, aren’t we?

Most importantly, though, let TLC know you will not watch their channel or patronize their sponsors until they stop exploiting these poor Gosselin children, particularly at this very hard and vulnerable time in their lives. Their worthless, abusive mother won't protect them, so it's up to total strangers to try to look out for their best interests.