Since You Asked

We have some very close friends with children the same age as ours; they have very similar outlooks to ours, both on child rearing and life in general. My husband wants to ask them to be our children’s guardians. There is a part of me that agrees with him, but another part is so torn. How can I choose friends when family is an option? (I also have another sister who is a potential candidate, but she is significantly older than I, and her kids are almost grown; I know she’d take my kids, but it would be an especially unfair burden to make her essentially start over when her child-rearing days are almost done). I know our friends would be wonderful parents to our kids, but can they ever love them as much as family? As I said, my sister is crazy about my daughter; I think she’d be devastated to find out she’d been replaced by our friends (if we do make the switch, I don’t intend to tell her, but plan to leave a letter with the will; I feel there’s no need to cause her pain for something that hopefully will never be an issue).

I love my family very much, and feel tremendously guilty about considering other guardians, but the most important thing is what’s best for my kids. I’m just so confused right now, I don’t know what would be best for my kids. My husband thinks this is all very cut and dried, but it’s got me completely paralyzed. I can’t put off calling the lawyer much longer! How can I reconcile all this?

Will-less and Torn

Dear Will-less,

Deciding who would raise your children if you were both to die is a grave matter. Rescinding such a request, once made, is sure to cause hurt feelings.

Putting aside your doubts about her fiancé’s cultural and religious habits, there is much common sense to appointing a close relative. While your friends would in all likelihood honor the obligation, they might not feel it to the same unquestioning degree as would your sister. No matter what circumstances befall her, your sister’s obligation will never flag. But friendships change with circumstance.

Not telling your sister that you’ve changed your mind is a bad idea. She should know what might be expected of her in the future so she can plan for it. If she always maintained a larger house on the off chance that she would have to take in your children and then learned, upon your death, that you never intended her to do so, it would compound her loss with a sense of betrayal. So if you changed your mind, you would be obligated to tell your sister.

But telling your sister, as I said, is sure to cause hurt feelings. It is a vote of no confidence in her and her choice of husband. It will damage your relationship.

And if circumstance should dictate that your friends move far away, or if you should grow apart or have a fight, you would then be faced with the necessity of going back to your sister and asking her to reconsider, after having once spurned her. This would be even more difficult for everyone.

Would your sister agree? Of course. She would feel obliged to. How could she refuse? But it would place a cloud over the transaction. How would she know that you might not yet again find someone you deemed more suitable and change your mind? It would put her and her husband in an awkward spot.

The benefits of making such arrangements with close family members are many. The bonds of family are unquestioned and permanent. Questions of social and religious attitude seem secondary. What matters is that the designated person feels the unquestioned necessity of caring for your children.

There is also the fact that other family members would also feel obliged to help out if your children went to your sister, so that the guardian would be guaranteed additional family support. That is not necessarily true to the same degree with your friends; their family members might be more inclined to help with the raising of their own flesh and blood. So your friends might get less support than your sister in such an undertaking. Likewise, your other sister might feel less inclined to help your friends than to help her own sister. While wishing to help in the raising of your children, she might be hindered by the lack of a strong, unquestioned relationship with your friends. And if it appeared to family members that your friends were relatively well off, they might be less inclined to help out financially with the kids’ educations. Also, being not linked by blood, they would be less likely to know the intimate financial details of each other’s conditions, and thus would be more likely to make erroneous assumptions.

For all these reasons I think that your dislike of your sister’s fiancé is outweighed by the practical benefits of sticking with your original decision.

So instead of changing your mind and thus weakening the bond with your sister, I suggest that you endeavor to strengthen it. You say you have only met her fiancé once. I suggest you redouble your efforts to welcome him into the family and try to understand where he is coming from. There are many things to recommend a military man. He can be depended on to honor obligations, for one thing. There is nothing inherently wrong with guns. Military men are taught gun safety. For a military man, a gun is a tool. It is a necessary part of life. Likewise, I do not see why the fact that he is religious should disqualify him. He is becoming part of your family. I suggest that you embrace your sister’s choice, and be grateful for the fact that she already knows and loves your child, and is willing to take care of your kids no matter what happens.

So I would leave things as they are for now. Meet with your lawyer to get the fine points of this decision figured out. Get to know your sister’s husband better. Let your children get to know them. Continue to spend a lot of time with your sister. Tell her that you would also like to be the guardian of her children, when and if she has them, if she is willing.

If they have kids, watch and see how they treat their kids. If the way they raise their children gives you cause for grave concern, then perhaps you should talk with them about it, and think about changing your minds. I mean grave concern — like if they beat them or endanger their lives or abuse them emotionally.

For now I would leave things as they are. Chances are, none of this will ever matter anyway. If all goes well, you will all lead long and happy lives and your grandchildren will play together and care for you in your old age.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

What? You want more?

Why? you may ask. Because he is a complete and utter slob! He grew up on a farm and spends lots of time outside tending to his garden and fixing his many lawnmowers that he has fished out of the trash. I spend hours cleaning, all for him to destroy the house in literally a matter of minutes. It is ridiculous. To add insult to injury he does not wash his hands … EVER. Not even after going poo … I feel like I was hoodwinked and bamboozled, because there is no way in hell I would have ever put myself in a situation to live with one of my parents at this point and time in my life. I have expressed my frustration with the situation, but he doesn’t want to ever talk about it. I want to move, but right now I am not financially stable and I am so close to finishing school, I don’t want to jeopardize my studies.

Grown Woman Living in Daddy’s House

Dear Grown Woman Living in Daddy’s House

I don’t think you are an ungrateful daughter. I think you are a person reacting to a shitty situation in an understandable way.

After years of being self-sufficient you’ve been thrown back into dependent daughterhood. That has got to trigger some feelings you’re not prepared for. That’s got to be tough on the ego. It would be hard for it not to matter how well your father handled it.

And he’s not handling it all that sensitively, one must say. When our  survival is symbolically threatened, we sometimes reassure ourselves by making our immediate surroundings clean and healthy and spotless. It’s a good thing to do if you’re feeling threatened and insecure; it can cheer you up to clean house. So here’s an interesting symbolic contradiction: Here you have come to your dad to help you survive, and he is providing for you, yet also doing things that symbolically threaten your survival: Dirt, poo, infection, disease, loss of control!

Subconsciously it may be felt as aggression: Your dad is threatening your survival rather than nurturing it. He’s bringing danger into the house. He’s bringing dirt and disease into the house, meaning, symbolically, into your body. So he’s polluting you when you are trying to regain your strength. The literal-minded may quibble but we’re talking about emotions that take place below our conscious awareness, in the language of symbols.

On the surface he’s doing you a favor, and good for him. But he’s also not admitting your personhood or your power: He’s retaining his own power over his own place. That’s the prerogative of property ownership in a society that worships property. You are expected to grant him the prerogatives of ownership. But he’s not accommodating you, really, as a person. It may even feel as though he’s trying to push you out.

His hospitality may be begrudging; his messing up the house may be passive-aggressive; he probably wants to go on living as he is accustomed to living. There may also be some unspoken disapproval of your reversal of fortune, and perhaps a little unspoken “I told you so,” if you have been too independent for his liking. He may even be enjoying being the father to a relatively helpless daughter once again — a daughter who cannot force him to wipe his feet.

Assuming your parents are divorced, is he also repeating a pattern of conflict he had with your mother? Could be. They could have had fights over just such things. If those fights led to their divorce, you may also be experiencing uncomfortable memories of an earlier symbolic threat to your survival. Also, not to jump ahead, but this could also be a preview of the role reversal that happens as your dad ages and weakens and you take on the role of caretaker, being sure he washes his hands and wipes his feet, as a mother would do in raising a child.

But that’s just the messy symbolic stuff it’s my job to dredge up. On the surface, in the practical present, you’re a capable adult woman in control of her life and career. You’ve made yourself a plan that requires you to do some compromising. That’s what this is: It’s a conscious compromise. You’re still making your own choices. This is just temporary.

You’ve found shelter in a bad time. Your dad is your ally. He loves you. He’s providing you a place.  He’s doing what he can, in his way.

Hang in there, finish your course of study, thank your dad and stay positive. When you look back on this, as uncomfortable as it is now, you’ll be grateful there was a place for you to go. With the passage of time it may even become a fond if bittersweet memory.

I know she loved me more than anything, and she sacrificed a lot to try to give me a good life, but as a kid, I felt as if I was battling her alcoholism for her. I would constantly find single-serving wine bottles stuffed between couch cushions, and it was an almost nightly occurrence for her to drink herself to sleep, leaving the house a mess and me to throw away the empty bottles and rinse out the glasses she would leave next to the couch. After she would go to bed, it was usually a coin flip whether or not she would rise from her sleep to stalk around the house staring blindly at everything and shouting incoherently. More than once she, thoroughly drunk, thought I was a burglar and tried to attack me. The first time this happened I was 11, and in her mind she had gone back in time and thought I was going to steal her baby (me). She nearly strangled me.

What made my childhood much easier was the fact that I had grandparents nearby who did not seem to struggle with alcoholism or poverty or depression. They were good people who seemed to rise above all the stupidity we are capable of. In fact they helped my mother make ends meet on a few occasions, and they always seemed to come to the rescue when we were in a jam. I felt more often than not that my grandparents were like my real parents, and my mother was like some big crazy sister who loved me a lot but was still trying to figure things out.

And from a young age, the lesson they kept quietly teaching me was that alcoholism was a demon in our family. It ran in our blood, and had ruined cousins, uncles and sisters. And the best way to avoid this fate was not to start at all.

And for my part I promised myself that I would never drink, or smoke, or do drugs.

And I never did.

A lot of people may not believe me, but I have never so much as sipped a beer, or taken a drag from a cigarette. And there is my problem. Everyone who knows me knows that I don’t drink, and I feel like I’ve put myself in this box where I will never drink.

This was fine for my early 20s, and in some ways I felt superior for not having blown hundreds of dollars at the bars, or woken up with hangovers, or been so drunk I couldn’t remember what happened to me. I have always been in control of my life, and that is something I take pride in.

But I also feel like there is this whole side to life that I may be missing out on, and that maybe I should relax these rules I’ve created for myself. I feel that a lot of people can’t relate to the fact I don’t drink, and I also would sometimes really like to be able to have a beer with my friends and be their equal, and not this always-sober outsider. A few weeks ago at a champagne brunch with friendly strangers who didn’t know I don’t drink, the waiter poured me a glass of champagne, and when they toasted I held it up and looked at it for a long time before I realized my wife was staring at me.

What to do?

Dear What to Do,

Testing yourself for alcoholism is like testing yourself for flammability. You’re probably not. But what if you are?

“Given the fact that alcohol-dependence seems highly heritable,” why take the risk?

Why not instead ask what needs alcohol might satisfy, and then find other ways to satisfy those same needs? Why not seek safe, life-enhancing alternatives to drinking? Why not read Abraham Maslow and design your life around the quest for peak experiences?

We raise our glasses and drink ceremonially to sanctify some event or passage. We all drink from the same bottle. By imbibing the same drink, we are joined; it is a kind of sacrament. You can mime the gestures but something pulls you to fully engage. Of course it does. This is not just about getting a little champagne in your mouth. It is a powerful ritual.

My suggestion is to find even better ways, more direct, honest and compelling ways to have this same ritual bonding and expression of shared esteem and purpose. I suggest you make this a lifelong pursuit. Make it a way of undoing for good the perhaps multigenerational history of alcoholism in your family.

This way, if those who dispute the role of genes in alcoholism are correct, and behavioral factors are more important, then you will still be doing something to eradicate certain behaviors that were leading to case after case of alcoholism. You will be finding something that members of your family have a particular need for, and satisfying that need.

Look for something that seems cool but not too cool, something you’ve always wanted to do, something you’re drawn to, that’s maybe a little outside your normal range but not totally kooky and weird.

For instance, it may be possible to participate in the ecstatic communality of a sweat lodge. I don’t know. Maybe a sweat lodge would be too weird for you. I don’t know how much facial hair you have, or what your body mass index is. I’m just saying, identify the underlying principle and then find something that suits your social tastes.

That there are things wrong in the world, that there are things so awful in this world that knowledge of them drives us to want to blot them out of consciousness. Read today’s piece by Noam Chomsky, for instance, for a reminder of how thinly “normal American life” veils our history of brutal atrocities.

How are you supposed to think about these things and not feel as though you are going mad? How are you supposed to have a conscience and not feel trapped by history? How are you to take all this in, as a young person? How to reconcile knowledge of evil done in one’s name with the innocent desire to believe in one’s country, to identify with one’s countrymen, to feel strong and patriotic and confident about the future?

These, too, are legitimate questions. So, my friend, I urge you to take seriously the genetic and environmental risk factors for alcoholism, and actively seek ways to have ecstatic experiences in this insane world without killing yourself. Adopt adaptive behaviors that don’t make things worse.

I like to do things that are stressful to the kidneys such as drink coffee, get drunk now and then, trip on plants that are metabolized by the kidneys and liver (this is part of my spiritual practice). Do I say nothing and hope that, come March when she’s testing possible donors, we are not a match? Or do I strain the friendship by admitting to her that I have misgivings about my promise?

Willing Initially

Dear Willing Initially,

You did a good thing. You offered to help.

You may or may not be a compatible donor. But you said these words out of a genuine spirit of generosity and kindness. This is a pretty amazing thing about human beings — that we are inclined toward helping each other. It’s a good thing.

It may turn out that you are a match, but it’s statistically unlikely. “In the case of cousins, your chance of being identical is 1 in 16. In the case of a friend, then your chances vary depending on how common your HLA is,” according to this helpful booklet from Stanford’s Program in History and Philosophy of Science and Technology.

In either case, having second thoughts doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. To donate a kidney is a big thing and it’s natural to have second thoughts. So wait until it’s time for all the potential donors to be screened, and get screened, and then deal with it once you know if you’re a potential donor.

This question and answer page from the University of Maryland Medical Center is very informative. As is this one. 

Give yourself some credit. You spoke out of an impulse toward compassion and selflessness.

If you are indeed a match and you can’t go through with it, no one will fault you for it. But your initial impulse shows you have within you the capacity to help. It’s a precious thing. Think of the worldwide effect of such impulses, if they were carried out millions of times over. Think of the things we could solve if we honored these selfless impulses and our societies were organized to realize them. Think how much needless suffering could be stopped.

You say you use psychedelic plants as part of your spiritual practice. Perhaps one of these trips you can inquire of your spirit guides what is the right thing to do. But you needn’t decide yet. Wait. More will be revealed.

I am very eager to have babies with the man I love. With us now moving, kids are on the back burner because we won’t have health insurance until one of us lands a job with benefits. We had been trying to get pregnant until the decision to move was made because I have decent benefits with my current hateful job. (One of the reasons I haven’t quit, the other main one being that I’m trying to hold this job out till we can move.) I really want kids soon; I have wanted to be a mother since I was 5. But the stress of life and my failing body seem to want other things for me. I had injured my back at work and now am in physiotherapy to heal it, yet I’m still obligated to work my full shifts. Those eight-hour shifts literally drain me. I haven’t had a period in 3.5 months (my doctor insists it’s stress-related). And most recently, my pap test came back with abnormal cells on my cervix. No further tests have been done, but my doctor thinks my back, lack of period and abnormal cells are at least partly because of too much stress. Hard not to be stressed when all these symptoms have made me worry and fret even more about never being able to have children! The more that I worry, the more stressed my body becomes. The more symptoms of the stress I experience, the more I worry. (A huge catch-22.) One of my worst fears is to end up being barren.

On to my other issue. My fiancé and I both smoke marijuana regularly. I will note here that we do not smoke cigarettes at all, nor do we drink alcohol very often. Although I have heard that it can prevent couples from conceiving, I only “slowed it down” when we were trying to get pregnant. My fiancé seems to have his usage under control. He is able to use on a part-time basis and not every evening and every weekend. I am a different story altogether. I use (abuse) marijuana for stress. I rush to get home after work to have the bad memories of the day dissolve into higher thoughts. I am not high at work, but evenings and weekends are full of my usage. It’s the way I’ve taught myself to deal. Although I don’t think marijuana is an “evil drug” that “leads to other drug usage,” I know that I am misusing it. I have never felt the need to try any other drug (besides alcohol and caffeine). But I barely even notice the effects any more. Despite that, I can’t imagine quitting it altogether. I know that if I were pregnant I would not smoke at all, because there is another human being involved who would be affected by it.

But without marijuana, how would I deal with life’s stress? Plus there is some part of me that feels like marijuana is not bad. You ought to know that in my family, a few other people smoke marijuana. My aunt and cousin probably use it once daily, and my mom and brother once or twice a week, and my dad on occasion. While they never permitted any drug usage as a teenager, I found out and smoked with family after turning 19. Obviously this is a huge part of the reason why I can’t seem to convince myself that marijuana is “bad.”

This new city will not have any marijuana contacts for my fiancé and me, and it is my plan to stop smoking when we move. But really, I don’t want to stop at all, and I feel like I’m lying to myself by thinking that a new city will stop me from finding a way to do it. Plus, my fiancé is moving first, and we will be apart for a month (we’ve never been apart for longer than 10 days in the past four years). I know that with him gone, I will want to smoke even more. Especially because I feel like I want to get as much smoking in before I “can’t” anymore.

I know several people who use marijuana more than I do and who firmly believe that no one can get addicted to it. I guess I’m not so sure about this, but I would like to believe it because then I’m just a hippie and not an addict. I worry about the usage affecting the physiotherapy on my back, but since we aren’t trying to get pregnant, I still smoke whenever I want to. My fiancé knows that I smoke too much, he knows that I KNOW that I smoke too much too. But month after month he still brings it home for us. I have tried to quit before, asking him to keep it all hidden and out of sight. This always fails, because I will find it and sneak some or bug and bug him to get it out of hiding for me.

I don’t think I can stop until he stops bringing it into the house and we get rid of all the marijuana paraphernalia that is around our place. If my fiancé doesn’t want to quit with me, I would be disappointed. But as long as he kept everything out of our house and cars, I think I could do it. I really do want children in the long run and better physiotherapy results in the short term. What do I do?

Moving and Shaking

Dear Moving and Shaking,

You are using marijuana to relieve stress.

Stress is your problem. Whether you stop smoking marijuana or not, you need to learn more and better ways to relieve stress.

Start doing tai chi; start doing yoga; meditate; take naps; breathe deeply a lot; do biofeedback. If you are doing any of these activities already, don’t conclude that since you’re doing it a little it must not work. Instead, do it more.

You may need higher doses of yoga to get relief. Also, if you are consuming lots of caffeine, see about cutting back. Try substituting some herbal teas for caffeinated beverages now and then. Notice the difference. Especially in the afternoon, cut out the caffeine so you can get a better night’s sleep.

You will notice things about yourself this way. You will notice the different qualities of consciousness that arise from various techniques. It will be entertaining and interesting. You will notice a gradual improvement in your ability to go through life in a relaxed, worry-free way. Unpleasant activities like work and dealing with power-hungry blockheads will go more smoothly.

During this time, you might want to experiment with not smoking for a time. Pick an occasional time when you are stressed out, and instead of smoking, do 15 minutes of meditation, or some tai chi or yoga.

Don’t try to quit all at once, especially not on your own. Just learn some better relaxation techniques. Take it easy. Look for gradual improvement.

Once you’ve found other ways to relieve stress, you may not feel so fearful about the idea of quitting marijuana for good. Try going without for a few days at a time and see how that goes. You can always smoke. But experience what it’s like to handle life without it. Try to get accustomed to that feeling. You may feel slightly on edge, but take a deep breath of fresh air instead of a hit of weed.

The thing is, whether you call yourself an addict or not, changing habitual behavior is hard, and it’s especially hard to do alone. It’s hard to do without a program. It takes time, effort and support, and there are ups and downs. So I wouldn’t recommend trying to stop smoking marijuana on your own, or just with your fiancé.

As you say, for a variety of reasons, you are going to want to quit. So what I’m suggesting is that you prepare, in these ways, for the day when you will need to quit. I’m sure marijuana gives you other things besides stress relief; it probably gives you a heightened sense of the beauty of life, of tastes and sounds, and of general well-being. These things you may need to seek out in life; I find that there are other ways to feel these momentary highs. Seek them out.

For quitting things, as you probably know, I favor the 12-step method because it has added benefits: It helps you get your life together and is a lasting program of living. It is a community. It works for a lot of things.

When and how you quit is up to you. I can say that based on experience, it is definitely possible. You can quit and lead a normal, happy life, when you’re ready to. My bottom line is just that A) You should acquire new stress-relief methods first, before trying to quit, and B) what was B? Oh yeah, B) Don’t try to quit on your own. If and when you do decide to quit, do it with a group or a program behind you.

And, hey: Good luck. You sound like really nice people and I wish you the best in life. And say hello to the kids when they come. And say hello to the mountains.

Yeah, I know this isn’t all my fault, that it takes two to make a bad relationship, and all that. And certainly there are women — most of them — who wouldn’t even look my way. Great for them. But for those who are willing to look my way, don’t I have a basic human obligation to keep them safe from my horribleness and inevitable failures? Without exception I say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing or just collapse.

So. Given that I contribute nothing to the world but disappointment and misery, and I can’t control my desire for companionship and attention, shouldn’t I just kill myself? Isn’t that the moral thing to do at this point?

A Dangerous Nothing

Dear Dangerous Nothing,

You, my friend, are exactly perfect the way you are. You’re not a moron!

Look on the bright side: You have a technique. Don’t wait to show her your bumbling, fumbling, weak and incompetent side.  Spill your soup on her now! On the first date. Roll your car over your own foot and have her take you to the emergency room. Come out of the bathroom with tape all over your face. Why? Because a person with tape all over his face looks funny!

It’ll break the ice. She’ll thank you for it!

Pour it on  about what a loser you are! That’ll get her going about how you just have low self-esteem and you’re being too hard on yourself.

If you are asking women to marry you and promising to fly them in your private jet to your villa in Portugal and saying you’ll pick them up at 8 o’clock sharp the next morning and then you are not showing up, then women are going to bed thinking about your private jet and then not getting to ride in it. That’s bad.

You should slap yourself in the face once very hard if you are doing that. Then you should force yourself to sell your imaginary private jet at a loss of millions of imaginary dollars.

But killing yourself wouldn’t make any sense at all, and it wouldn’t make anyone happy, not even you.

Besides, there are worse people.