Love Goddess… it cracks me up that "study’s show"… I mean i could have told you that! without a study. Just look at how men respond when their wife has a cold or the flu.

The reasons? Not so simple. My best friend and I discussed this a lot recently as she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year. It wasn’t her S.O that she even "wanted" around her the majority of the time. So maybe your onto something with the idea that possibly women initiate the divorce in that situation. For the most part I find that women are often profoundly dissapointed in teh emotional support they receive from men in most aspects of their lives. Why would being extremely ill be any different? When i had a surgery that i knew i was going to need a lot of care for… I called my sister to come stay with me. it never even ocurred to me to have my husband do it. He’d suck… i knew that. I know for a fact i wouldn’t rely on my husband for the majority of support i’d need if i were very ill. what that would ultimately mean.. i don’t know.

As far as men supporting each other in war etc.. it’s a different type of support than women look for. Men speak each others language. They can do that fairly simply. Some number of months ago… I had a mini breakdown and was sobbing and telling my husband how i was feeling and why. He was looking at me very intently and it ocurred to me he had no freaking idea what i was talking about. I stopped mid sob looked at him and said "you have no idea waht i’m telling you do you" and he said "not a clue". we laughed. later on he would refer to that as the night I was "talking in tongues".

So ultimately I think men and women in need of serious support have different ways of supporting each other that in some instances don’t work well. I think men are definitely wired to expect to be on the receiving end of that in a marriage. and i think we perpetuate that as women. then we’re surprised when they don’t give back well.

Ladies - if you’re interested try to find the April 2009 issue of Readers Digest. it’s got an article titled "the shocking truth about cancer tests" in it. It discusses how scientists and researchers believe that some tests, especially mammograms not only increase our risk for cancer but cause us to have treatments we don’t need. It was an excellent and interesting article. And for those of you on here who are thinking the mammogram thing is some sort of political agenda in regards to our administration… Readers Digest is a very conservative magazine. I dont’ know for sure but i’d be surprised if it isn’t owned and run by strict conservatives. it ofetn runs pro life type articles etc…

No… i don’t think so. I have a practical edge that came from my mom. But mom was raised in such abject poverty and then mostly stayed there. So she didn’t own many clothes to begin with. and those she did own were very utilitarian. This question actually made me wonder about my mom and her dreams and what did she let go of when it quit being a possibility. When I was in highschool mom gave me a hadful of dresses from the 50’s. oh man how i wish i had them now. She got them in Seattle when a man who was "courting her" insisted on buying them for some kind of long weekend they were having that required dressing up. They were gorgeous. I never saw her wear them nor even look at them in my life time. Not until she gave them to me. But i know she thought they were beautiful. I wore them on and off until I was in my thirties. By then they were damaged and I was kind of "over" the vintage look (dumb dumb dumb) and let them get away.