1. Talked Out;

Get yourself a gun and learn how to use it. Are you really this dense or are you just completely blind to what this control-freak has planned for your future? This guy has more issues than National Geographic, and - lucky you - he wants to make them yours!!! Usually I write these little japes snickering at the LW, but I find little humor here. This dude is dangerous. To you. And your kids. I suggest (and in the strongest possible terms) that you have a large, hairy, armed brother/uncle/policeman with you when you tell this clown to get the hell away from you and stay the hell away from you. Otherwise, the next newspaper column we see you in is likely to be an obituary.

2. Teen Love;

ummmmmmm... Helllllooooo?????? Are you smoking crack? News flash!!!! You've just been dumped!!!! You should be at least marginally grateful that he was "honest" enough to do it up front instead of stringing you along as the "at home" chick, while he gleefully sampled the "at school" chicks on the side. He's still an asshole, but at least he had the temerity to tell you he was an asshole. Move on with your young life, little one, and either find someone who believes, as you evidently do, that absence makes the heart grow fonder or (better yet) find someone bigger, stronger and more handsome to tide you over until you find the one you want to settle down with... and make sure you find an ocassion to introduce him to the idiot who just dusted you off as if neither you nor your feelings were of any consequence whatever.

3. Out-Law:

You have no idea what the word "outlaw" really means, munchkin. Most of the 'Nam vets I know have serious misgivings about Iraq - as well they should - and any father worthy of the title would tell his son so if he were serving there. Not to belittle his service (and none of them would ever do so), and not to be unpatriotic (which none of them ever were), but simply to prepare them to deal with some simple home-truths which they will ultimately come face to face with under the worst possible conditions. Home-truths they learned themselves, the hard way, in the 'Nam. Like killing for Peace is like fucking for Chastity. Like (could it be more obvious than to a 'Nam vet) you cannot save a country from the people who fucking live in it. Like people who are willing to turn women, children, retarded relatives and the utterly despondent into human bombs (can we say "suicide bombers"? Yes... I thought we could) will turn you into either a killer of women, children, etc. or into a corpse in fairly short order... and if you survive, you will have to live with what they turned you into once you are back in the world. Like (and this is the real biggie here, honey) your wife will never be able to comprehend what you are going through, and how it changed you, but I will, and I will still be here for you when you get home too, just like she will be, my son...

In the end, of course, the answer to your question - at least the one you asked directly - is simple. It ain't your call to make. It is your husband's call. Entirely. Should he choose to blow off his parents to avoid conflict with you, believe me when I tell you he will come to regret it - but his father will forgive him that... and forgive you too. It's not like our generation didn't face the same pressures and same choices long before you were born. Should he choose to honor his father - and his father's service to his country in what was, in the end, another misguided military excursion - I sincerely hope you can have the dignity - and respect - to abide by that decision without whining and trying to drive a wedge between your husband and the one man in his life who probably best understands what he is going through - and cares!

By all means, pass along Prudies gratitude to your husband for his service... and while you are at it, pass along mine to his father for his.

4. Not Formal;

First... thank you for lightening the mood. Finally a LW I can truly laugh at with...

"what would be an appropriate response to my co-workers' questions?"

How about, "Nah... no date. But I have a performance review this afternoon and I figure this outfit gets me at least a 10% edge on your ass just in the imagination department".

Seriously now... don't you have anything more critical to worry about in your job than what your co-workers think of your goddam dress?

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh!

Awesome, awesome responses. Especially #3. I hope the son can recognize and set a limit if he has to, if the dad has more negativity than he needs at this point. I think that is the only real concern the wife should have.

hosnfefr:

Awesome, awesome responses. Especially #3. I hope the son can recognize and set a limit if he has to, if the dad has more negativity than he needs at this point. I think that is the only real concern the wife should have.

It is a concern the wife should not have. His father will be far more blunt than she will ever be comfortable with... and far more understanding than she will ever be able to even imagine being. It ain't about negativity, son. It's about reality. It ain't a reality America is comfortable with, but it is damn sure the reality America's sons (and daughters, this time) will be living with for the rest of their lives. In a free fire zone where the enemy wears no uniform and dresses out thier children with booby trap grenade belts, we send our children to war knowing they will either learn to shoot children or come home in a box. That is the reality of war. Those who sit at home on their sofas watching American Idol and waiting for the next call from Aunt Sadie whose son serves in Afghanistan may not like to belive that, but every man who served in VietNam does... and grieves that our children are once again being sent out into this madness to satifsy a politician's ambitian to "win a war".

Here's another news flash... for all of you who never picked up a gun....

Nobody in the history of the world ever won a war. On rare ocassions, the survivors turned out to be less vile than the losers, but the very act of fighting them turns even the most angelic of nations - and of men - into monsters. We forget that at our own peril... and the peril of our children.

God help us all if we ever forget it...

Thank you, Graylodge, for saying the things that I wanted to but could not say in my response to LW3. I have not been there but had a husband who was in Viet Nam and now a son in Iraq .

LW #3 is in for a big surprise if she thinks that her husband is going to come home from 6/8 months of down&dirty combat in that hell hole and spend his time having hours of blissfull world shattering sex, deep soulful conversations , take a freaking GMAT or whatever exam and fill out college applications all while listening to her justify not seeing his parents because , ya know, his Dad is sooo " abrasive". ( every one and their mothers no that Nam vets can be abrasive. They earned that right.) If she continues on that path the only thing he is going to want to do is get the hell away from her. In fact my son spent a week of his last R&R dealing with the problems of his troops whose wives did the same thing she's trying to justify doing. Some ended up in the brig, some in the hospital and some back in the barracks headed for divorce.

Sorry to vent on your thread. Thank you for your service

jean simmons now publishes the dear abby column

one her motifs is to publish a letter from a young girl whos older boyfriend is "controlling", and then a week later publish all the letters from readers who relate their personal experiences that THEIR controlling boyfriends turned into physical abusers.

does happen some times, i expect.

however, this sounds a bit like the movie "minority report" where people are punished for their crimes before they commit them, eh? as tom cruise told the would be murderer "you have a choice".

when i see a study that shows that all men with an unnatural interest my sexual pecadillos will turn out to be wife beaters, that will be a scientific metric we can act on.

in the mean time, i prefer not to have every barking dog executed because someone elses barking dog bit someone. be kind to animals - train them not to bark, don't assume the worst.

that's what marriage counselling and therapy is for.

I'm all for the son spending time with his family, but if all his father does is harp on him for simply doing his job as a soldier, I can understand him and his wife not wanting to spend a lot of time with him.

Yeah, war is messy, and we shouldn't like it, but sometimes we have to do things we don't like for the greater good. I'm saying I completely agree with the way things have been handled in Iraq, but we should not take it out on the soldiers who are doing their jobs as best they can.

I realize that my answer was a projection of how I would want to protect my husband in such a situation. I would want to encourage him to see them, but to feel comfortable to set a limit if he needed. Which of course is based on the assumption that the son is bothered by his father's reactions. Maybe it is all just her problem. So what concern should the wife have?

I think the wife is afraid her husband is going to come home "abrasive" from war, just like his father and them spending time together will both exacerbate and cement this behavior. Not judging, just saying.

MeeOMyO:

Thank you, Graylodge, for saying the things that I wanted to but could not say in my response to LW3. I have not been there but had a husband who was in Viet Nam and now a son in Iraq .

.........

Sorry to vent on your thread. Thank you for your service

To quote Jethro Gibbs (and every gunny who ever screamed), "Don't apologize". Vent to your heart's content. Your right to do that is what we were led to believe we were fighting and dying for. The fact that it turned out to be a cynical lie doesn't change your rights (despite what that asshat Rumsfeld says) nor the fact that we fight - and die - for that right more than any other. Vent away... and if I disagree with you I will still applaud you. Nothing could be more American than mouthing off about what ails - or even irks - us. And don't thank me for my service. Just be there for your son. (Your father provided you with good training for that, I expect.) He will not return from Iraq the same man he was when he left... and he will hurt in ways he doesn't even have words to describe. Just hug him, love him and don't ask him to explain. He can't... and you really really really don't want to hear him try. If he's ever in town, I'll buy him a beer, say, "Yup" when he slips into a funk and says ugly about the assholes who sent him there and, if he slips into a really bad place, head butt him once or twice and tell him, "You're back in the world now. Don't let those asshole politicians take that away from you too".

God bless you and all the Moms who never understood, knew damn well that they never could, and kept loving us anyway. There are a hundred of you for every wife that couldn't do it... and you, more than anyone or anything else, are what kept us alive and semi-sane while we healed.

mermaid33:

I think the wife is afraid her husband is going to come home "abrasive" from war, just like his father and them spending time together will both exacerbate and cement this behavior. Not judging, just saying.

He will. They will. And it will.

Not judging, just saying.

She needs to get off her high horse and accept that or she needs to get the hell away from the poor bastard before she turns his return to the world into Chapter Two of the nightmare for him. If she thinks he's coming home from that place to sweep her off her feet with a fablous honeymoon, wild romance and sail off into the sunset to live happily ever after she has one hell of a rude awakening coming. Frankly, I'd be all for that rude awakening if it weren't for the fact that she will, in the process, make that poor bastard's return to the world an even worse nightmare than it is already, of necessity, going to be. He deserves better... and she needs to wake the fuck up.

This ain't Oprah, folks. This is fucking war.... and you people don't have a fuckin' clue what that means...

Take a chill, O Contrary One; we're on the same team.

She thinks it's gonna be a goofest when he comes home and he needs some serious decompression time of his choice even if that means knocking back a few with his "abrasive" dad. He's not going to be the guy she dated and she can't reprogram him to her specifications via carefully chosen family activities.

Ease up on me. I'm going to be one of "those moms" pretty soon.