House of Eratosthenes

It starts out as one military WAG critiquing the actions of another…one who figured out the chosen life was not for her, and then wrote those two most deplorable things, a Dear John letter and a kiss-and-tell.

Meet Courtney Cook, an extraordinarily shallow and callous woman.

I can chart the entire history of my first marriage along the lines of U.S. military engagements. I fell in love with my ex-husband in no small part because he was a soldier. He was a Dartmouth senior on a ROTC scholarship, and his heroes were George Patton and Ulysses S. Grant. He could use words like “valor” and “courage” without irony. I liked the way he carried himself — taller it seemed, and with honor.

So they fell in love, got pregnant, and then got married. Her then-husband was activated due to Operation Desert Shield. Long story short, she ended up not having a clue what she was getting into and wanted to leave her husband because she couldn’t handle the separation.

Now, I know firsthand how difficult a relationship in the military is. I don’t begrudge someone who acknowledges that they can’t handle it. It takes a special kind of person to be able to endure this lifestyle. Camp Lejeune is full of women who make it through with grace, dignity, and class — and women who just couldn’t do it. There’s no shame in admitting that you just can’t handle it…

We’re going to take this bit by bit, because the entire article is long and doesn’t need to be excerpted. So with that, away we go…

As Cassy points out, it is a tough, tough life. And I’m really in no position to comment on it from any angle. BUT — Ms. Cook’s epistle seems to nudge up against the line, and maybe cross it, that forms the perimeter around guidance for the unproductive, narcissistic and self-absorbed to get all their things at the expense of those who are equipped with, and ultimately burdened by, the sense of dedication and duty that they themselves lack.

And I do have some experience with that part of it. As is to be expected from anyone who was fleeced in this manner, through his own sense of obligation and decency, I find the word “deplorable” fails to condemn it with a sufficient level of severity. No adjective does.

It’s sad, because there are many people out there who hold the same contempt for the military in their hearts. These men and women put their lives on the line, and yet they unfortunately are treated so low by so many. And only on a liberal website like Salon would this be featured.

This article is despicable because it’s really a how-to manual of how to ruin a soldier’s life, not just how to leave him. But for someone so self-absorbed, what does it really matter if she leaves a soldier’s heart shattered in her selfish, cowardly wake?

In the military and outside of it, I’m afraid we’ve entered an era in which, if a man is married, he really can’t make sure he’s sufficiently intact to attend to his day-to-day commitments as a professional and as a father until & unless he has some say about who is wife is allowed to talk to, and what she reads. That seems pretty harsh — but come on. Articles in Salon about how to leave your husband with a minimum of fuss and bother? Let him, and the kids, just pick up the pieces? Not How to get out of an abusive relationship. Not How to find a place to stay. Not How to get a good lawyer to make sure you don’t get screwed. But instead…How to sucker everyone else into doing all the hard stuff so you don’t have to. Including the kids.

This is why we have the “Family” item in My 42 Definitions of a Strong Society, because of brittle bitches like this:

26. Family first. Nobody who lives in a household ever tolerates disparaging comments about anybody else who lives in that household.

If a fella has a best-bud who thinks divorce is cool…then, once he’s a husband, he has an obligation not to talk to that guy anymore. Yeah, I mean it, and the same goes for the ladies. Once you’re married there’s no room for you to be sticking your nose into articles “guiding” you on how to go through an easy divorce. That’s just sick. Unless you absolutely, positively need that kind of help because things have deteriorated past some point of no return.

But, of course, these articles and books and podcasts and what-not have not been confining themselves to that turf, have they. Not by a long shot. Since that first wave of coffee-table feminist books clear back in the 1960’s, there has been a distinct flavoring of “any divorce that might possibly happen, we want it to happen” about them.

We cannot pass laws against this, I don’t think. We need a firm stigma against it. And we need it stat. Offering up quick and easy step-by-step instructions, for the Self-Entitlement 301.81 crowd to meet all their goals at the expense of everyone else, needs to be about as approved as offering step-by-step instructions for a thirteen-year-old to build a nuclear bomb in his bedroom.

Or putting a white hood over your head and burning a cross.

We need to trample this right down into the dirt. We’ve tolerated it for too long.

“If a fella has a best-bud who thinks divorce is cool…then, once he’s a husband, he has an obligation not to talk to that guy anymore. ”

While divorce wasn’t exactly the issue (it was a slew of other things), I came up against this a couple of years ago. I had a best friend of roughly 15 years, and after spending a weekend with him I realized that, as a family man now, I simply couldn’t have anything to do with him anymore. It would be bad for the whole brood.

Sucked, too. It was like breaking up with a long-term girlfriend, the one whose family you had gotten really close with.
- Andy | 02/12/2010 @ 09:47
Way to go, Morgan.

The sense of doom engendered in men by “Friday night with the girls” has gone on unnoticed and unaddressed for way too long. Like Andy and you point out, that cuts both ways – but the incessant pressure put on women by their “peer group” may be the primary source of rot in the modern family.

Thumbs up.
- rob | 02/12/2010 @ 10:00
Thanks for the positive words, rob.

Andy, it only becomes a dilemma for the married folks who have some measure of class. You showed some. Good on ya.
- mkfreeberg | 02/12/2010 @ 10:42
If you’ve not been… there are 90 comments (at last count) on the subject of Ms. Cox and her scribblings, all written by war fighters and the women who love them at Lex’s place. It’s a great good read on many levels.
- bpenni | 02/12/2010 @ 12:54
Rule 26 is perfect.

You’re absolutely correct about the friends you keep, we both limit ourselves to other happily married couples. Discontent, infidelity and divorce are catching, best to keep your distance from those sorts if you want to keep your family on track.
- Daphne | 02/12/2010 @ 14:45

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How to Destroy a Soldier’s LifeFriday, February 12th, 2010

How to Destroy a Soldier’s Life
Friday, February 12th, 2010