You mean the red flags the size of the ones that were hanging on the Red Square during the celebration of the October revolution?
Yes, I see them just fine.
Offering such an input is in itself a red flag for me. Improving your education and employability is good. Even when you’re 50. I would be warry of anybody advising anybody else against it.
Yes, of course, someone is going to give the example of the the guy blowing 50 000 $/year on a PhD in underwater basket weaving. But generally speaking such an advice is a bad one, and very unlikely to be in her best interest in this case. People should keep an escape way, and keeping a job and being educated are the main ways to do so.
Isolation and helplessness. Yeah, it’s pretty much a how-to guide, isn’t it? Now all he needs to do is move them to a rural area, and he’d tell her that of course they’d only need one car, for him to commute to work.
As far as whether Skald (or anyone in a similar situation) should say something, I’m reminded of the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is so well-known that everyone forgets the point Jesus was making.
Jesus has just told his listeners “love your neighbor as yourself,” and one of his listeners responds, “but who is my neighbor?” Jesus recounts the parable, then, turning the original question inside out, asks: “so, who was neighbor to this man?”
So, who’s gonna be neighbor to Lori? Who’s going to reach out and try to clue her in on what she’s likely being set up for?
Sure, chances are it won’t help. But it wouldn’t exactly kill someone in the situation Skald’s in to take fifteen minutes to call Lori up and try to open her eyes a little bit. Fifteen minutes could save fifteen percent of her life from being a living hell.
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There’s a good case that MBAs tend not to teach you that much useful knowledge (and I say this as someone who knows a whole lot of them, and has had business school professors in my family).
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If she’s going to be taken care of by her husband, it’s a waste.
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Maybe she and Rick have talked about the kind of marriage they want, maybe he doesn’t want a super-educated wife, and maybe she’s perfectly fine with that. They know more about their relationship than you or me. Though Skald the Rhymer knows more than me or you too, so he has more of a right to judge them than I would have.
It’s also quite possible that her being educated and/or employed is going to hurt their marriage.
How on earth could education hurt a marriage?
More red flags than if the Communists had a May Day rally at Nuremberg on the day of a huge NAZI party rally.
That being said, if I may editorialize, this sort of thing is not all that rare in some fundamental Christian families. On the other hand, it’s not all that rare in situations that escalate to severe domestic abuse either.
She might start reading books, and…thinking… (Insert gif of Gaston here.)
She might meet decent men at school.
She might learn that some people think her husband’s behavior is unacceptable.
She might become financially independent and not need to stay with him.
Lots of women are trapped - either intentionally or accidentally - in bad marriages that they don’t escape until they go back to school and become more employable and more confident in their own abilities and skills. From their troglodyte husbands’ point of view, education destroyed their marriage. In a practical sense, it allows them to escape an already destroyed marriage.
Seriously?
A lot of men are happiest when they’re the smarter / more educated partner of the pair, and a lot of women are happiest when they’re with someone smarter / more educated than them. not that intelligence or education are the same thing, of course. So I can very easily see circumstances where a woman becoming more educated, or earning more money, would make the marriage less happy.
Not saying that it’s morally right or anything, but… Unfortunately, I agree.
I have a friend from high school who admitted that when he found out that his wife earns more than he does (due to education, field of work, etc.), he felt “like less of a man.” I think he has the mindset that the husband should be the main provider in the relationship. I don’t think it’s a matter of her having to rely on him, and therefore he maintains security and power in the relationship, as much as it is of subscribing to old notions of gender roles.
Strange thing is, when they started dating, she was working on an advanced degree, to his Bachelor’s, so it really shouldn’t have come as a shock. Additionally, he said that he honestly had no problem with her working. He just disliked that she was so successful. I guess it was a “you can be equal, but just don’t be *too *equal” type of thing.
Very possibly, this was a marriage that needed to be harmed.
Though Skald has said he learned his lesson from a talk he had with an abuser many years ago, namely the lesson that such talks don’t work, I’d say that Skald has not just a right, but a positive duty, to make it known to Lori that should she ever need to get out, she can contact him and he’ll help however he can (even if this just means getting her in touch with someone else).
I don’t presume there’s any further duty to continue monitoring the situation, but I do think there’s at least the minimal duty I just described.
Yes, until :
-She wants to divorce
-He wants to divorce
-He’s a control type and she eventually wants some financial independence
-He loses his job
And probably many other situations. Regardless of your current circumstances, keeping yourself at least a bit employable is extremely wise.
I didn’t have a talk with him. A football-player friend and I had a searching conversation with him, which is a Rhymerism for “we beat him up.”
That’s not a boast, by the way. Outr beating him up was criminal, thuggish, pointless, and stupid. It didn’t accomplish anything other than stroking our egos, made her feel sympathetic for him, and probably increased the time she spent with him.
Yeah, that’s not happening. Lori is one step away from being a complete stranger to me, and lives hundreds of miles away. My heart isn’t that big, and even if it were she’s too far away for me to do much, and even if she weren’t so far away she has actual family who care about her (I am told that her parents expressed some objections to the marriage), and even if she didn’t have her own family my heart isn’t that bad.
Not your circus. Not your monkeys. Stay out of it.
After two pages, still this. Have you bothered to read the thread?
Lots and lots of flags…red and otherwise.
Lori appears to have very low self esteem issues and Rick is taking advantage of those to satisfy some ego bullshit theory of himself.
Skald probably owes it to Rick to put he and Lori on the mailing lists of various organizations that will fill their mailbox with appropriate propaganda.
I don’t know what would remotely not be morally right about it.
Speaking just for myself, I certainly wouldn’t want a spouse who was super-educated, or who earned on a similar level to me (which is why I’m more attracted, generally, to unambitious girls).