…and what a surprise it was.

I received a Hallmark card yesterday in the mail, congratulating my husband on becoming a “New” father ???

We’ve been married for 8 years, we don’t have children of our own. I have fertility issues. My husband is 38 and I’m 32.

I confronted him about the anonymous card, which only had the name of the baby girl stated on it.

What happened next has left me devastated. I am in pieces.

The baby is the result of a short affair he had with a woman at work. My husband’s a physician and I am assuming she is a nurse ( he won’t tell me). The relationship ended when she found out she was pregnant and would not abort the baby as my husband had requested.
:
Please help me please … I am devastated.

Desperate Wife

The advice columnist replies,

:
I think immediately you need to find a friend to confide in. That means today. This is just too big an incident in your life to hide from people you know. And right now you need support your husband cannot offer you. I should also let other readers know your letter has been in my inbox for a few weeks (sorry for the delay) so things may have moved or shifted since then.

I also suggest you invest in a marriage counsellor. They may be able to help you manage the chaos of this time and begin to help you and your husband decide whether you have a future.

It makes sense that your feelings for your husband did not change overnight with news of his betrayal. And it makes sense that much of your anger is directed at the “other” woman. Try to see though that the one person who is not the blame for this situation is the child and that if you stay with your husband you’ll be making a decision to accept this little girl into your life in some capacity – free from anger and blame.

Don’t tackle this alone, Desperate Wife. This is too much for anyone to bear by themselves. Talk to close friends and find a professional to help. All the best.

I notice this because it cuts to the quick of what I hate about advice columnists. It is often quite bonecrushingly bedazzling how often and how quickly they recommend professional counselors. I can’t imagine the financial arrangements that would have to be involved for them to be “on the take” in some way, but it’s a little disquieting that nobody ever seems to ask the question.

What kind of counselor ought to be sought, never seems to be explored. And if you have any experience with these counselors at all, you know it really should be. It determines absolutely everything.

Advice columnists are also overly warm and touchy-feely. Which is okay for crossword puzzles, but I think in situations like this one it is irresponsible. My brand of advice columnist would not have run this letter. Why? Because the implications of such a personal crisis are too profound and it’s too hot to handle? No. Because the author failed to say what it was she wanted done, and failing that, she further failed to state what her priorities were.

Therefore, the only advice you can give in response to a message like this is of the 1970’s pop-psych variety, in which priorities and objectives are entrusted to the aid, being thought to represent far too weighty of personal matters to be managed by the poor traumatized quivering mass of flesh babbling away on the couch. To the columnist’s credit, she recognizes that if a proxy has to step in and make this betrayed wife’s personal decisions for her, or give her a crutch so she can make the decisions without relying on her own internal resources, such a proxy role is outside the help that can be rendered from an advice column. But you see…that’s why the letter shouldn’t have been run.

We know very little about the woman who wrote this letter. It’s likely that she’s not even in that kind of a hole; once she’s able to put her thoughts together and recognize the ramifications involved in each option, she’ll be perfectly able to make the necessary decision and navigate competently the brambled paths that confront her in life’s jungle. Just needed to vent, as it were. Who in the world wouldn’t?

But the real disservice performed here — the goals and objectives injected into this equation by the advice columnist, having been omitted by the original author, were all of the soothing variety. To replenish the ego. To calm. To make someone feel good about themselves.

I see how someone might be inclined to visualize that as a need, missing from this situation. Trouble is, when we make decisions with that in mind, that’s when we make the wrong ones. Especially in cases like this.