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"She left us back when I was a kid."--Gus

Speaking as someone who's mother walked on her family when I was too young to even remember her being there, I have to say I have some empathy with Gus now. BTW-she left because being a wife and mother was cramping her style. Having to deal with abandonment issues and anger and suspicion of women, I can see how Gus would have taken the path he has, especially if booze is involved. Giving in to that anger would be so easy at times, but I was fortunate that my dad's a good guy and both my grandmother's were loving, rock solid ladies.


A Little Fellow Follows Me
- Lee Fisher


A careful man I want to be,
A little follows me;
I do not dare to go astray,
For fear he'll go the self-same way


I cannot once escape his eyes,
What'er he sees me do, he tries;
Like me he says he's going to be,
The little chap who follows me.


He thinks that I am good and fine,
Believes in every word of mine;
The base in me he must not see,
The little chap who follows me.


I must remember as I go,
Through summer's sun and winter's snow;
I am building for the years to be
That little chap who follows me.

Taking that poem's logic, if he only had his father and grandfather, who were both violent, drunk, abusive, sexist pigs, to raise him, there wasn't much chance of him turning out good. Neither his mother or grandmother cared enough to try to break the cycle of abuse by taking their children way from that enviornment, they just walked away, because it's easier to ignore a problem than to fix it. There was no one there to show him they were wrong.

Maybe Gus' mistreatment of woman is his way of getting back at the mother he hardly knew and wondering why, if his father was such a monster, did his mother leave him to be raised by him.

Sorry for the rant, parental abandoment issuses really get to me.

Except that Gus is an adult, and like the poem you used, he can choose how he will act. He didn't have to call the station and rag on "Belle" but he chose to, so he can't complain about what comes back at him for it.

Unless you are totally brain damaged (literally) it doesn't MATTER what your childhood was like. What matters is what you choose to do as an adult. Geniuses and high achievers can have bad childhoods, too, but they choose to make better decisions.

We already have too many whining "victims" in the world. We need people who will take charge of their own lives.

Vinylrecords4ever wrote:Neither his mother or grandmother cared enough to try to break the cycle of abuse by taking their children way from that environment, they just walked away, because it's easier to ignore a problem than to fix it.

Given the behavior shown by Gus (including his past violence towards Bebe), it may be that his mother didn't fight for custody because she knew that if she stayed around and tried for a normal divorce process that she'd be killed.

Hardly a week goes by without there being a local case of some poor woman being killed by her abusive boyfriend or husband because he found out that she was planning to leave her.

Going to the courts for a restraining order often doesn't help in these cases, because you are not dealing with a rational person.

Worse yet, if she tried to flee with her children, the police will get involved to bring her back, putting her in double jeopardy. Either jail for kidnapping or, if she is let out on bail (and therefore restricted from traveling), she is likely to be killed by her out of control husband.

So while I don't in any way endorse family abandonment by either parent, I can easily understand how an abused woman might just flee for her life, with remaining hidden and unfindable being a critical part of her staying alive.

TGIF

Y'know, it's funny... you don't hear about too many guys running away with their kids for fear of their lives, now do you?

Wonder why that is...

[/devil's advocate]

Gus just needs to find the right kind of woman...

someone strong enough to beat the tar out of him when he starts getting too "uppity". and who will try and include him in her schemes to take over the world.

so... the abusive drunk who doesn't think twice about hurting others for his own pride or profit, is somehow less loathesome than the harmless village idiot (aka: the "lefty")...
Right. Ok. So, violent, morally reprehensible characters good, peaceable yet ignorant shmuck with "head-in-the-clouds" syndrome and a loud voice bad. Got it.

...

blitz wrote:so... the abusive drunk who doesn't think twice about hurting others for his own pride or profit, is somehow less loathesome than the harmless village idiot (aka: the "lefty")...
Right. Ok. So, violent, morally reprehensible characters good, peaceable yet ignorant shmuck with "head-in-the-clouds" syndrome and a loud voice bad. Got it.

...

I don't think that's what they're saying. Look over some of the posts on the last page of the "Gilly jus' don't learn!!!" thread. It's the general consensus that as annoying as Gilly can be, Gus makes him look good in comparison.

However, even as dreadful a person as Gus is here, I think it is useful to point out that sometimes the people who are the biggest jerks and the hardest to deal with are the ones who most need our compassion. Do they deserve it? No way! But then, I'd say that at one point or another we all receive compassion and understanding that we don't deserve.

In case anyone missed the point---

Gus treats women like dirt. Just like his Daddy. And his Daddy's Daddy.

Gus ain't got no woman.

His Daddy ain't got no woman.

His Daddy's Daddy aint got no woman.

And not a one of these three Rhodes Scholars has a CLUE why.

There's no need to read any more into it than that.



The ironic thing is that Gus' situation is more and more of a rarity these days. The actual situation is a WHOLE lot uglier. The divorce courts are the only courts wherein the law favors the party member of an agreement wishing to break that agreement..... and the slant towards favoring the women is obscene. The man can do <I>absolutely nothing wrong</i> and still lose everything. I know personally of several individuals whose wives
1) Cheated on them-sometimes sequentially
2) Filed for divorce
3) got everything--- the house, the car, the kids, and half of everything the poor shmuck made from then on
4) Did everything they could, from then on, to stick the screws to their ex-husbands.... including finding creative ways to deny them visitation to their own children, up to and including falsely accusing them of child abuse.

The more and more I look at the state marriage is in, the more I have to say that prenuptual agreements are a modern necessity. From my perspective, they're more Christian than the modern method of marriage--- because They force the courts to recognize the marriage oath as once again <I>legally and morally binding.</i> Ironically, those little contracts are the only thing that put any authority back in "till death do us part" in the eyes of the Law.

Ralph isn't the only one who knows a guy who got screwed in a divorce. A friend of mine (and ex-coworker) was divorced in southern California. This matters. The courts so heavily lean on the women in that state that even though his wife cheated on him (and was addicted to prescription drugs, AND bled him dry the entire time they were married) she got the house (which he owned outright previously). She got the car. She got the bank account. She got the kid (!). He got a monster child support payment, a mountain of debt, and gets to talk on the phone to his son once a month for an hour--which his ex-wife always finds a way to cut short by interrupting the kid while he's on the phone (Since they live in different states, and his ex and the courts have nailed him so hard, he can't afford to even drive out to see his son). If he's lucky he talks to his kid for ten minutes out of the hour. It's sad, really. He makes 60 grand a year at his job. He's driving an 8-year-old pile of junk car, he lives in a one-bedroom apartment the size of my living room, he can't even afford cable TV or the cheapest dial-up Internet access--his ex-wife leaves him just enough for rent, food and power. She takes everything else.
I'm glad for him that in about a year, his son will be old enough to choose who he wants to live with. Then maybe at least he'll get his kid back (and hopefully he won't have to pay that monster child support payment)

What I'm concerned with here also is that what happens to guys who wind up in abusive relationships? It DOES happen. There are some downright vicious women out there, and there are cases where men are victims of domestic violence. What happens to them? People think women are ashamed to report violence in the home, how do you think the typical guy would react? Even if his wife was beating the living crap out of him, most guys wouldn't say anything out of fear of embarassment. The real kicker is that when a woman does summon the courage to get help, there is a network of support for her, both from private non-profits and from law enforcement. What is there for a male victim of domestic violence? Anyone? Yeah, that's what I thought. They believe they have nowhere to go and noone to talk to, and they are RIGHT. Despite what everyone seems to think, women are NOT always the victim. Sometimes, women are just as nasty, cruel and violent as some men--sometimes they're WORSE.

...sorry for the rant, got a little carried away.

Too many people don't really get to know the other person before marriage, figuring if it doesn't work out, they can always divorce.

My wife and I had to take several months of classes from our church before we could get blessing to marry in the church, and some of the things were real eye-openers. At least two couples in the group decided not to get married and actually split up over the experience.
If you know you are going to make your vows before God and take it seriously, you try a lot harder to know beforehand if it will work, and to MAKE it work when you get married.

This is why I can't help but feel a little empty inside when I hear people crying to preserve the "sanctity of marraige" when the divorce rate in this country is more than 50% and climbing, and they're doing NOTHING about it--except keeping gays from marrying, because as we all know that'd be the end of the [BLEEP]-ing world.

no one can help a marrige go longer or shorter better then the people getting married.

RHJunior wrote:In case anyone missed the point---

Gus treats women like dirt. Just like his Daddy. And his Daddy's Daddy.

Didn't seem to stop the last two from getting one to stick around long enough to reproduce - any reason to think the cycle won't continue with Gus?

But on the other hand:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1060569
New British Reality Show Says Husbands Can Be Trained Just Like Dogs

Ron

labrusca wrote:Too many people don't really get to know the other person before marriage, figuring if it doesn't work out, they can always divorce.

My wife and I had to take several months of classes from our church before we could get blessing to marry in the church, and some of the things were real eye-openers. At least two couples in the group decided not to get married and actually split up over the experience.
If you know you are going to make your vows before God and take it seriously, you try a lot harder to know beforehand if it will work, and to MAKE it work when you get married.

Sounds like a good plan.

SolidusRaccoon wrote:

labrusca wrote:Too many people don't really get to know the other person before marriage, figuring if it doesn't work out, they can always divorce.

My wife and I had to take several months of classes from our church before we could get blessing to marry in the church, and some of the things were real eye-openers. At least two couples in the group decided not to get married and actually split up over the experience.
If you know you are going to make your vows before God and take it seriously, you try a lot harder to know beforehand if it will work, and to MAKE it work when you get married.

Sounds like a good plan.

Solidus is right; this is an EXCELLENT plan. I wish more people and more places did something like this.

Before my husband and I got married, we had several sessions with our minister, probing our attitudes about money, children, how we were prepared to deal with conflict, etc., and all the things that make up the hard work of making a relationship work. This is actually a big bee in my bonnet; there are so many people in the current generation who seem to expect "happily ever after" without dealing with the reality that a relationship is actually work. It should all just "happen", effortlessly, according to the fairy-tale view of life. And then there are the people (ok, generally women) who focus more on the *wedding* than the marriage; they just want the big, expensive fairy-tale magical wedding, with no thought to the fact that they are actually taking an oath before God to spend the rest of their lives with someone...[**grumble**]

Ok, rant over now. Sorry.

Glad you have a happy marriage Luna.

SolidusRaccoon wrote:Glad you have a happy marriage Luna.

Heh...actually I do. He drives me nuts sometimes, and I know I drive him nuts sometimes, but that's just part of the fun of it. Truth is, I couldn't imagine my life without him.

though not married, I think from people talking and from watching my own parents that...

it is nearly impossible to love someone and not at one point or another drive them nuts.

I think you're right.

I think that is half the fun of love.