Frustrating Husband Quotes

I felt angry, frustrated. I felt I didn't belong, not in my church, not in my home, not in my skin. Amidst the chaos, i felt alone, in need of a friend instead of a sister, someone detached from my world. The "woman's role" theory disgusted me. I would soon be a woman, and I knew I could never perform as expected. I was tired of my mom's submission to her religion, to her husband's sick quest for an heir, to his abuse. I was sick of my dad, of reaching for him as he fell farther away from us and into the arms of Johnnie WB.

Years later, after I’d met and married my husband—a man who is light-skinned to some and dark-skinned to others, who speaks like an Ivy League–educated black Hawaiian raised by white middle-class Kansans—I’d see this confusion play out on the national stage among whites and blacks alike, the need to situate someone inside his or her ethnicity and the frustration that comes when it can’t easily be done. America would bring to Barack Obama the same questions my cousin was unconsciously putting to me that day on the stoop: Are you what you appear to be?

Even after centuries of human interacting, children still continue to rebel against their parents and siblings. Young marrieds look upon their in-laws and parents as obstacles to their independence and growth. Parents view their children as selfish ingrates. Husbands desert their wives and seek greener fields elsewhere. Wives form relationships with heroes of soap operas who vicariously bring excitement and romance into their empty lives. Workers often hate their bosses and co-workers and spend miserable hours with them, day after day. On a larger scale, management cannot relate with labour. Each accuses the other of unreasonable self-interests and narrow-mindedness. Religious groups often become entrapped, each in a provincial dogma resulting in hate and vindictiveness in the name of God. Nations battle blindly, under the shadow of the world annihilation, for the realization of their personal rights. Members of these groups blame rival groups for their continual sense of frustration, impotence, lack of progress and communication. We have obviously not learned much over the years. We have not paused long enough to consider the simple truth that we humans are not born with particular attitudinal sets regarding other persons, we are taught into them. We are the future generation's teachers. We are, therefore, the perpetrators of the confusion and alienation we abhor and which keeps us impotent in finding new alternatives. It is up to us to diligently discover new solutions and learn new patterns of relating, ways more conducive to growth, peace, hope and loving coexistence. Anything that is learned can be unlearned and relearned. In this process called change lies our real hope.

It was not easy being a parent. It was not easy raising your four children on your own. But what made June the most frustrated at her husband - her twice ex-husband - was that she had no one to swoon over her children with.

Okay,” I mumble, completely bemused, bewildered, and shell-shocked. He leans over my desk. What now? I am caught in his hypnotic gaze. “Love doing business with you, Mrs. Grey.” He leans in closer as I sit paralyzed, and he plants a soft tender kiss on my lips. “Laters baby,” he murmurs. He stands abruptly, winks at me, and leaves. I lay my head on my desk, feeling like I’ve been run over by a freight train – the freight train that is my beloved husband. He has to be the most frustrating, annoying, contrary man on the planet. I sit up and frantically rub my eyes. What have I just agreed to?

My husband claims I have an unhealthy obsession with secondhand bookshops. That I spend too much time daydreaming altogether. But either you intrinsically understand the attraction of searching for hidden treasure amongst rows of dusty shelves or you don't; it's a passion, bordering on a spiritual illness, which cannot be explained to the unaffected. True, they're not for the faint of heart. Wild and chaotic, capricious and frustrating, there are certain physical laws that govern secondhand bookstores and like gravity, they're pretty much nonnegotiable. Paperback editions of D. H. Lawrence must constitute no less than 55 percent of all stock in any shop. Natural law also dictates that the remaining 45 percent consist of at least two shelves worth of literary criticism on Paradise Lost and there should always be an entire room in the basement devoted to military history which, by sheer coincidence, will be haunted by a man in his seventies. (Personal studies prove it's the same man. No matter how quickly you move from one bookshop to the next, he's always there. He's forgotten something about the war that no book can contain, but like a figure in Greek mythology, is doomed to spend his days wandering from basement room to basement room, searching through memoirs of the best/worst days of his life.) Modern booksellers can't really compare with these eccentric charms. They keep regular hours, have central heating, and are staffed by freshly scrubbed young people in black T-shirts. They're devoid of both basement rooms and fallen Greek heroes in smelly tweeds. You'll find no dogs or cats curled up next to ancient space heathers like familiars nor the intoxicating smell of mold and mildew that could emanate equally from the unevenly stacked volumes or from the owner himself. People visit Waterstone's and leave. But secondhand bookshops have pilgrims. The words out of print are a call to arms for those who seek a Holy Grail made of paper and ink.

we who are your closest friends feel the time has come to tell you that every Thursday we have been meeting as a group to devise ways to keep you in perpetual uncertainty frustration discontent and torture by neither loving you as much as you want nor cutting you adrift your analyst is in on it plus your boyfriend and your ex-husband and we have pledged to disappoint you as long as you need us in announcing our association we realize we have placed in your hands a possible antidote against uncertainty indeed against ourselves but since our Thursday nights have brought us to a community of purpose rare in itself with you as the natural center we feel hopeful you will continue to make unreasonable demands for affection if not as a consequence of your disastrous personality then for the good of the collective

The Ballad of Lucy Jordan The morning sun touched lightly on the eyes of Lucy Jordan In a white suburban bedroom in a white suburban town As she lay there 'neath the covers dreaming of a thousand lovers Till the world turned to orange and the room went spinning round. At the age of thirty-seven she realised she'd never Ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair. So she let the phone keep ringing and she sat there softly singing Little nursery rhymes she'd memorised in her daddy's easy chair. Her husband, he's off to work and the kids are off to school, And there are, oh, so many ways for her to spend the day. She could clean the house for hours or rearrange the flowers Or run naked through the shady street screaming all the way. At the age of thirty-seven she realised she'd never Ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair So she let the phone keep ringing as she sat there softly singing Pretty nursery rhymes she'd memorised in her daddy's easy chair. The evening sun touched gently on the eyes of Lucy Jordan On the roof top where she climbed when all the laughter grew too loud And she bowed and curtsied to the man who reached and offered her his hand, And he led her down to the long white car that waited past the crowd. At the age of thirty-seven she knew she'd found forever As she rode along through Paris with the warm wind in her hair

women, if you simply follow your feelings, you are more likely to fall in love with a guy who will thrill you for twelve to eighteen months as a boyfriend and then frustrate you for five to six decades as a husband. Guys, on the other hand, are more inclined to experience romantic love with women they are attracted to physically, yet physical appearance is the thing most likely to change in a person’s life.

Keep the right perspective Some people would love to have your problems. They would gladly trade places with you. They would love to have the job that frustrates you. They would love to sit in traffic in that car you don’t like. They would love to have your husband, who gets on your nerves. They would love to live in the house you think is too small.

What she saw in their eyes terrified her. She was a woman traveling alone, in a country that had not seen exposed female faces in over five years. She turned back and cried tears of frustration all the way to Pakistan. ...Asra..., I find her fantasy delightful. Who else would risk her life to take stuffies to Afghanistan?

Didn't you have some big deal last night?" Peabody asked her. "Yeah, in East Washington. Roarke had this dinner / dance thing for some fancy charity. Save the moles or something. Enough food to feed every sidewalk sleeper on the Lower East Side for a year." "Gee, that's tough on you. I bet you had to get all dressed up in some beautiful gown, shuttle down on Roarke's private transpo, and choke down champagne." Eve only lifted a brow at Peabody's dust-dry tone. "Yeah, that's about it." They both knew the glamorous side of Eve's life since Roarke had come into it was both a puzzlement and a frustration to her. "And then I had to dance with Roarke. A lot." "Was he wearing a tux?" Peabody had seen Roarke in a tux. The image of it was etched in her mind like acid on glass. "Oh yeah." Until, Eve mused, they'd gotten home and she'd ripped it off of him. He looked every bit as good out of a tux as in one. "Man." Peabody closed her eyes, indulged herself with a visualization technique she'd learned at her Free-Ager parents' knees. "Man," she repeated. "You know, a lot of women would get pissed off at having their husband star in their aide's purient little fantasies." "But you're bigger than that, Lieutenant. I like that about you.

I feel calmed and relieved when my husband knocks at my study door in the middle of a fight, puts his arms around me, and says, “I love you. This is stupid. Let’s just drop it.” Like two kids in the sandbox, we’re suddenly light and playful again.

One of the greatest causes of frustration in marriage is when our husbands fail to meet our expectations.

Security. Was it just a word? If not, then was it only by the sacrifice of other things, happiness, love, or some wild ecstasy that she had never known, that it could be obtained? And did too much driving, too much faith in safety and permanence, unfit one for these other things? Irene didn't know, couldn't decide, though for a long time she sat questioning and trying to understand. Yet all the while, in spite of her searchings and feelings of frustration, she was aware that, to her, security was the most important and desired thing in life. Not for any of the others, or for all of them, would she exchange it. She wanted only to be tranquil. Only, unmolested, to be allowed to direct for their own best good the lives of her sons and her husband.

When you father dies! What then?" Lord Needham looked up from his pheasant. "I beg your pardon?" Lady Needham waved one hand in the air as though she hadn't time to think of her husband's feelings, instead prodding, "He shan't live forever, Penelope! What then?" Penelope could not think of why this was in any way relevant. "Well, that shall be very sad, I imagine." Lady Needham shook her head in frustration. "Penelope!" "Mother, I honestly have no idea what you are implying." "Who will take care of you? When your father dies?" "Is Father planning to die soon?" "No," her father said. "One never knows!" Tears were welling in the marchioness' eyes. "Oh, for God's-" Lord Needham had had enough. "I'm not dying. And I take no small amount of offence in the fact the thought simply rolled off your tongue.

Mr. Bingham said, “Hey, you guys are supposedly psychic. Why didn’t you see that coming and warn the girl?” Mom sighed. “Again, we don’t see the future.” “Yeah. You’re a bunch of frauds.” I’d had it. My frustration boiled over. I turned to Mrs. Bingham. “Do you know a Jane Sutherland?” Confusion swept over her delicate features. “Yes, she used to be my husband’s secretary before he was laid off. What about her?” “He wasn’t laid off. He was fired. The company has rules against boinking your secretary, even though your husband apparently has no qualms with the matter.” “Clarity!” Mom screamed.

Whatever is getting in the way of your plan for the day- the toddler's tantrum, the messy bedroom, the sticky juice leaking all over the fridge and into the cracks of the drawers, the frustrated child, the irritable husband, the car that won't start, the vomiting dog, the pie spilled on the oven door...whatever that intrusion into your grand plan for the day is, it's also an opportunity to enter into rest.

Fairly early on in our marriage, my husband found out that a big strong hug cured just about any ailment a woman might have. Sadness, anger, frustration, fear, low self-esteem, hopelessness, bad hair—nothing stands a chance against a powerful hug. Now I can’t imagine it’s easy to step up and hug an angry woman, but from the perspective of the person being hugged, I can tell you that love trumps anger every time—even when it’s the hugger the huggee is angry at.

Travis, I love you with all of my being, but I love Cassie, too. And right now she needs me more than you do. Forgive me. Meri She loved him. The wonder of the statement seeped into him, but the joy that should have accompanied the knowledge faded beneath his growing frustration and fear. How could she possibly think that anyone needed her more than he did? She was his heart, his very life. If anything happened to her . . . Travis tore the top page from the tablet and hardened his jaw. He’d just have to make sure nothing did happen. After all, if a wife was going to tell her husband she loved him, she ought to do it in person. And he aimed to see that she did precisely that. Right after he kissed the living fire out of her and showed her exactly how much he truly needed her.

Can you make a house of cards?" she asked. "Yes," Violet said, and went on looking. This way Violet had of seizing first not the most obvious sense of what people said to her but some other, interior echo or reverse side of it was a thing that baffled and frustrated her husband, who sought in her sybilline responses to ordinary questions some truth he was sure Violet knew but couldn't quite enunciate. With his father-in-law's help, he had filled volumes with his searchings. Her children, though, hardly noticed it. Nora shifted from foot to foot for a moment waiting for the promised structure, and when it didn't appear forgot it. The clock on the mantelpiece chimed.

Many years later when I got involved in activism, I noticed a very common thread. A lot of us girls had been psychologically abused by our mothers. A [Muslim] woman who has no control over her life craves control. There are very few outlets where that control is acceptable. In her immediate family, she cannot exert control over her husband or her son, but her daughter is fair game. All of her aggression and frustration are released in that one direction. Since, according to Hadith, Heaven is at the feet of mothers, mothers will get to determine if their children will burn in Hell for eternity or not. That is a lot of power to wield over a child. That power can have tragic results in the hands of an abusive mother. She can abuse the status and use it to control and manipulate. You must be an obedient slave to get her affection, support, approval, and, most importantly, to get into Heaven one day. She can revoke her 'blessing' at any point, keeping you in line for perpetuity.

It was not easy, being a parent. It was not easy raising your four children on your own. But what made June the most frustrated at her husband—her twice ex-husband—was that she had no one to swoon over her children with.

When Augustus Townsend died in Georgia near the Florida line, he rose up above the barn where he had died, up above the trees and the crumbling smokehouse and the little family house nearby, and he walked away quick-like, toward Virginia. He discovered that when people were above it all they walked faster, as much as a hundred times faster than when they were confined to the earth. And so he reached Virginia in little or no time. He came to the house he had built for his family, for Mildred his wife and Henry his son, and he opened and went through the door. He thought she might be at the kitchen table, unable to sleep and drinking something to ease her mind. But he did not find his wife there. Augustus went upstairs and found Mildred sleeping in their bed. He looked at her for a long time, certainly as long as it would have taken him, walking up above it all, to walk to Canada and beyond. Then he went to the bed, leaned over and kissed her left breast. The kiss went through the breast, through skin and bone, and came to the cage that protected the heart. Now the kiss, like so many kisses, had all manner ofkeys, but it, like so many kisses, was forgetful, and it could not find the right key to the cage. So in the end, frustrated, desperate, the kiss squeezed through the bars and kissed Mildred’s heart. She woke immediately and she knew her husband was gone forever. All breath went and she was seized with such a pain that she had to come to her feet. But the room and the house were not big enough to contain her pain and she stumbled out ofthe room, out and down the stairs, out through the door that Augustus, as usual, had left open. The dog watched her from the hearth. Only in the yard could she begin to breathe again. And breath brought tears. She fell to her knees, out in the open yard, in her nightclothes, something Augustus would not have approved of. Augustus died on Wednesday.

And all the while I have people telling me, at least you still have something of your husband. Do they mean the book chronicling our work in Vystrana? No, of course not—never mind that we undertook that work together, with intent. That cannot possibly be as valuable as the accidental consequence of biology.” Very quietly, Tom said, “Is not a child worth more than a book?” “Yes,” I said violently. “But then for God’s sake let us value my son for himself, and not as some relic of his father. When he is grown enough to read, I will be delighted to share his father’s legacy with him; it is my legacy as well, and I hope he has inherited our curiosity enough to appreciate it. I would not mind a motherhood where that was my purpose—to foster my son’s mind and teach him the intellectual values of his parents. But no; society tells me my role is to change his napkins and coo over the faces he makes, and in so doing abandon the things I want him to treasure when he is grown.

And I knew, as I had always known but somehow forgotten to remember in these past years, that I could never have done it, that no one else could ever have done it. That I would never know anyone as brave, as astonishing -- as frustrating, too, but that was, I was forced to admit finally, part of his charm -- as the slightly stooped elderly gentleman standing beside me in the shadows, listening while schoolchildren read of his exploits. The man who was, for better, for worse, my husband. The man who I loved, in spite of himself.

Frustration is the by-product of attempting to fulfill responsibilities God does not intend for us to carry. The truth is that God has promised to give us everything we need, and if He knows a husband would make it possible for us to bring greater glory to Him, then He will provide a husband.

We who are your closest friends feel the time has come to tell you that every Thursday we have been meeting, as a group, to devise ways to keep you in perpetual uncertainty frustration discontent and torture by neither loving you as much as you want nor cutting you adrift. Your analyst is in on it, plus your boyfriend and your ex-husband; and we have pledged to disappoint you as long as you need us. In announcing our association we realize we have placed in your hands a possible antidote against uncertainty indeed against ourselves. But since our Thursday nights have brought us to a community of purpose rare in itself with you as the natural center, we feel hopeful you will continue to make unreasonable demands for affection if not as a consequence of your disastrous personality then for the good of the collective.

My dear Mr FitzGeorge!' cried Lady Slane. 'You really mustn't talk as though my life had been a tragedy. I had everything that most women would covet: position, comfort, children, and a husband I loved. I had nothing to complain of - nothing.' 'Except that you were defrauded of the one thing that mattered. Nothing matters to an artist except the fulfilment of his gift. You know that as well as I do. Frustrated, he grows crooked like a tree twisted into an unnatural shape. All meaning goes out of life, and life becomes existence - a makeshift. Face it, Lady Slane. Your children, your husband, your splendour, were nothing but obstacles that kept you from yourself. They were what you chose to substitute for your real vocation. You were too young, I suppose, to know any better, but when you chose that life you sinned against the light.

We’re at a holiday ball where I’m auctioning off the paintings my dead husband commissioned for his mistress. Does it sound like I’ve been treated kindly thus far?” A flush imbued her cheeks with a red glow as she huffed in annoyance. The Bryony he’d known prior to her marriage had been polite and a tad stiff in his presence—a genteel lady careful with her manners. This show of frustration intrigued him. I can’t afford to be intrigued.

I read them a poem by Phillip Lopate that someone once sent me, that goes: We who are your closest friends feel the time has come to tell you that every Thursday we have been meeting, as a group, to devise ways to keep you in perpetual uncertainty frustration discontent and torture by neither loving you as much as you want nor cutting you adrift. Your analyst is in on it, plus your boyfriend and your ex-husband; and we have pledged to disappoint you as long as you need us. In announcing our association we realize we have placed in your hands a possible antidote against uncertainty indeed against ourselves. But since our Thursday nights have brought us to a community of purpose rare in itself with you as the natural center, we feel hopeful you will continue to make unreasonable demands for affection if not as a consequence of your disastrous personality then for the good of the collective.

The kiss went through the breast, through skin and bone, and came to the cage that protected the heart. Now the kiss, like so many kisses, had all manner of keys, but it, like so many kisses, was forgetful, and it could not find the right key to the cage. So in the end, frustrated, desperate, the kiss squeezed through the bars and kissed Mildred's heart. She woke immediately and she knew her husband was gone forever. All breath went and she was seized with such a pain that she had to come to her feet.

Because you do not happen to be married does not make you essentially different from others. All of us are very much alike in appearance and emotional responses, in our capacity to think, to reason, to be miserable, to be happy, to love and be loved. You are just as important as any others in the scheme of our Father in Heaven, and under His mercy no blessing to which you otherwise might be entitled will forever be withheld from you. . . . I do not worry about you young men who have recently returned from the mission field. You know as well as I what you ought to do. It is your responsibility and opportunity, under the natural process of dating and courting, to find a wonderful companion and marry in the house of the Lord. Don’t rush it unduly and don’t delay it unduly. “Marry in haste and repent at leisure” is an old proverb that still has meaning in our time. But do not dally along in a fruitless, frustrating, and frivolous dating game that only raises hopes and brings disappointment and in some cases heartache. Yours is the initiative in this matter. Act on it in the spirit that ought to prompt every honorable man who holds the priesthood of God. Live worthy of the companionship of a wonderful partner. Put aside any thought of selfish superiority and recognize and follow the teaching of the Church that the husband and wife walk side by side with neither one ahead nor behind. Happy marriage is based on a foundation of equal yoking. Let virtue garnish your courtship, and absolute fidelity be the crown jewel of your marriage.

She had spent her whole life trying to fix other people—her parents, her sisters, William—but that had been a fruitless endeavor; she could see that now. She couldn’t keep her father alive or her mother in Chicago or Cecelia celibate or William ambitious. She’d just been fine-tuning her skills for now, for what mattered, for motherhood. She would protect and celebrate her baby girl and let everyone else do whatever they wanted. With her daughter, Julia was complete. She realized, amazed: I love myself. That had somehow never been true before. William entered the room with a nervous smile on his face. Julia had been frustrated with her husband for weeks, but inside her new warmth, she felt affection for him. She was love. She beamed at William and thought: I never needed you. Did you know that? I thought I needed a husband, but I don’t actually need anyone. I could have done everything by myself. William bent his long body to hug her, and Julia wrapped her arms around his neck. She told him how excited she was for him to see the baby girl she’d made.

My voice thick with frustration, I declared that if men and women could only meet each other under normal circumstances, that delusions of instant love would be more infrequent. While I do believe that great attractions lead to genuine love, such as it had with my sister, Sara, and her husband, Assad, such a happy outcome is rare. When men and women rarely have the opportunity to enjoy the other's company in ordinary social occasions, spontaneous emotions are quick to rise to the surface, often ending in terrible personal tragedies.

As Tom talks, I think of how much I miss my husband, Ken, who’s back home in New York and not a sensitive type either, far from it. Sometimes this is frustrating: if something moves me to tears of empathy or anxiety, he’ll be touched, but grow impatient if I stay that way too long. But I also know that his tougher attitude is good for me, and I find his company endlessly delightful. I love his effortless charm. I love that he never runs out of interesting things to say. I love how he pours his heart and soul into everything he does, and everyone he loves, especially our family.

If you want to raise your children successfully, you must combine love with discipline. The way to produce unhappy, frustrated children, on the other hand, is to spoil them—to give them all they ask for, to do everything they want, to succumb to every demand. Children raised in this way will, when they grow up, expect life to treat them the same way their parents did. But life does not play the game that way! Life is pretty tough—and getting tougher. I have observed the lives of people whose parents treated them with unscriptural indulgence and I would say that, in varying degrees, they have all had difficult lives. To spoil your children is not kindness. Often, in fact, it is the expression of laziness. It takes much less effort to spoil your children than to discipline

We who are your closest friends feel the time has come to tell you that every Thursday we have been meeting, as a group, to devise ways to keep you in perpetual uncertainty frustration discontent and torture by neither loving you as much as you want nor cutting you adrift. Your analyst is in on it, plus your boyfriend and your ex-husband; and we have pledged to disappoint you as long as you need us. In announcing our association we realize we have placed in your hands a possible antidote against uncertainty indeed against ourselves. But since our Thursday nights have brought us to a community of purpose rare in itself with you as the natural center, we feel hopeful you will continue to make unreasonable demands for affection if not as a consequence of your disastrous personality then for the good of the collective. They

Grey was here.” He hadn’t known, that was obvious from the way his eyes widened. “You lie.” Rose chuckled. “I saw him. I spoke to him. He said he came to see me. And then he ran out of here as though the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels.” Archer shook his head, an expression of disbelief on his face. “They tend to do that when Hades freezes over.” Then he offered her a grin. “He braved being seen in public just to come here and see you?” “He was watching from a balcony. I wouldn’t have known he was here if the fortune teller hadn’t told me.” His brows shot up. “And there’s a story for another time. Look, Lady Rose, I know he’s frustrating as all get-out, but you cannot expect Grey to change years of behavior in a week. You have to be patient-like waves lapping at a stone.” That was so very easily said. He wasn’t the one being pressured to find a husband. He wasn’t the one who felt as though everything she wanted was just out of reach. “You know, I suddenly find myself very interested in Lady Monteforte’s literary tastes. Shall I make the introductions?” “I will hang your puppy if you do not.” Rose grinned. He truly was the most charming of rascals. “How very fortunate for me then, that I do not own a puppy.” “For shame. Every young lady should have a puppy.” Rose made the introductions, and Archer wasted no time in asking Lady Monteforte if she cared to dance. For a moment it seemed the lady might decline, but then Rose offered to stay with Jacqueline and Archer offered the widow his arm. She hesitated before taking it. Interesting. Rose had never seen a woman react so coolly to Archer’s charm before. The Kane men were obviously losing their touch.

Oh, Captain Aubrey,' cried she, 'I have a service to beg of you.' Mrs Fielding had but to command, said Jack, smiling at her with great affection; he was at her orders entirely - very happy - delighted - could not be more so. 'Why then,' she said, 'you know I am a little talkative - the dear Doctor has often said so, desiring me to peep down - but alas I am not at all writative, at least not in English. English spelling! Corpo di Baccho, English spelling! Now if I give you a dictation and you write it down in good English, I can use the words when I write to my husband.' 'Very well,' said Jack, his smile fading. It was just as he had feared: and he must have been quite mistaken about the signals. Mr Fielding was to understand that the excellent Captain Aubrey had saved Ponto from being drowned: Ponto now doted upon Captain Aubrey and ran up to him in the street. Wicked people therefore said that Captain Aubrey was Laura's lover. Should these rumours reach Mr Fielding he was to pay no attention. On the contrary. Captain Aubrey was an honourable man, who would scorn to insult a brother-officer's wife with dishonest proposals; indeed she had such confidence in his perfect rectitude that she could visit him without even the protection of a maid. Captain Aubrey knew very well that she would not ply the oar. 'Ply the oar, ma'am?' said Jack, looking up from his paper, his pen poised. 'Is it not right? I was so proud of it.' 'Oh yes,' said Jack. 'Only the word is spelt rather odd, you know,' and he wrote she would not play the whore very carefully, so that the letters could not be mistaken, smiling secretly as he did so, his frustration and disappointment entirely overcome by his sense of the ridiculous.

When Camilla and her husband joined Prince Charles on a holiday in Turkey shortly before his polo accident, she didn’t complain just as she bore, through gritted teeth, Camilla’s regular invitations to Balmoral and Sandringham. When Charles flew to Italy last year on a sketching holiday, Diana’s friends noted that Camilla was staying at another villa a short drive away. On her return Mrs Parker-Bowles made it quite clear that any suggestion of impropriety was absurd. Her protestations of innocence brought a tight smile from the Princess. That changed to scarcely controlled anger during their summer holiday on board a Greek tycoon’s yacht. She quietly simmered as she heard her husband holding forth to dinner-party guests about the virtues of mistresses. Her mood was scarcely helped when, later that evening, she heard him chatting on the telephone to Camilla. They meet socially on occasion but, there is no love lost between these two women locked into an eternal triangle of rivalry. Diana calls her rival “the rotweiller” while Camilla refers to the Princess as that “ridiculous creature”. At social engagements they are at pains to avoid each other. Diana has developed a technique in public of locating Camilla as quickly as possible and then, depending on her mood, she watches Charles when he looks in her direction or simply evades her gaze. “It is a morbid game,” says a friend. Days before the Salisbury Cathedral spire appeal concert Diana knew that Camilla was going. She vented her frustration in conversations with friends so that on the day of the event the Princess was able to watch the eye contact between her husband and Camilla with quiet amusement. Last December all those years of pent-up emotion came flooding out at a memorial service for Leonora Knatchbull, the six-year-old daughter of Lord and Lady Romsey, who tragically died of cancer. As Diana left the service, held at St James’s Palace, she was photographed in tears. She was weeping in sorrow but also in anger. Diana was upset that Camilla Parker Bowles who had only known the Romseys for a short time was also present at such an intimate family service. It was a point she made vigorously to her husband as they travelled back to Kensington Palace in their chauffeur-driven limousine. When they arrived at Kensington Palace the Princess felt so distressed that she ignored the staff Christmas party, which was then in full swing, and went to her sitting-room to recover her composure. Diplomatically, Peter Westmacott, the Wales’s deputy private secretary, sent her avuncular detective Ken Wharfe to help calm her.

When I Find It Difficult to Trust Him Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. PROVERBS 3:5 HAS YOUR HUSBAND ever done something you feel has violated your trust in him? It doesn’t have to be anything as terrible as infidelity. It could be financial irresponsibility, or some kind of lie or deception, or hurtful treatment of you, or a confidence he shared with someone else. Whatever it is, you can find yourself wary—always suspecting he may do the same thing again. Yet there must be trust in your marriage relationship or you can never move forward. Living in such a close relationship without trust is not living at all. It’s remarkably sad to not be able to trust the one we are supposed to trust the most. If this has happened to you, it must be remedied, rectified, and resolved. Only God can truly restore the kind of trust you need to have. If your husband has done something to lose your trust, pray that God will lead him to complete repentance. Pray also that your heart will be willing to forgive him. This can be especially hard if he is a repeat offender, but it is not too hard for God to work forgiveness in your heart if you are willing. Ask God to set you free of all anger, frustration, disappointment, fear, and resentment. The most important thing to do after you have prayed for your husband’s repentance and your forgiveness is to pray you will trust God to work a miracle in your husband’s heart and yours as well. You have to first decide that You will trust God with all your heart and not lean on your own understanding. Then He will enable you to trust your husband again. My Prayer to God LORD, I confess any time when I have lost faith in my husband and don’t have full trust in him. I know that is not the way You want me to live. Help us both to have faith in each other and not live in constant distrust, bracing ourselves for what violation of trust is going to happen next. Where my distrust is unfounded, I pray You would help me to see that and enable me to step out in trust of him again. Where my distrust is legitimate because he has truly violated that trust, I ask for a miracle of restoration. First of all, I pray You would lead my husband to total repentance. Bring him to his knees before You in confession so he can be restored. I pray he will be sincerely apologetic to me as well. Second, help me to forgive him so completely that I can trust him fully without reservation again. And last, but most important of all, help me to trust You with all my heart to rectify this situation. Work powerfully in my husband to make him trustworthy, and do a work in me to make me trusting. Help me to not depend on my own reasoning, but rather to depend on Your ability to transform us both. In Jesus’ name I pray.

The general kind and soft customs of Mustang were soon to strike me as exceptional. Apart from occasional disputes between husband and wife, which like family rows all around the world bring raised voices, I never heard a person scream or shout; Even the children had very civilised manners. In fact the only person I knew to consistently angry in Lo Mantang was myself, and Tibetans consider bd temper a Western characteristic. Take for example the reactions of European to missing his train; he will invariably swear under his breath. Who in our can stand frustration without giving vent to anger? I soon had to master my own temper, having raised my voice against one of the innumerable people who stopped to stare at me and my smal party, I was told by a peasant: ‘’I cannot understand; you are a great man, how is it that small things like myself deserve your wrath?’’ After that I learned to be tolerant, realising that by getting mad I was only debasing myself, and that it was stupid to be bothered by trivialities.

A bedraggled and thoroughly frustrated Catti-brie entered her chambers much later to find her husband dancing with their little girl. Or maybe they were training. Drizzt did a broad jump. Brie hopped, both feet off the ground. She touched down lightly and sprang again, and a third time, which put her up beside her father. “You,” Drizzt said. Brie laughed. She jumped up as high as she could and turned in midair. She got about a quarter of the way around before she ran out of air beneath her, thumping down and holding her balance. Drizzt leaped up gracefully and spun about, a full spin, landing and dropping into a squat that put his face right before that of his giggling daughter. “You!” she said. Up sprang Drizzt, executing a backflip that landed him on his feet, but only momentarily, as he plopped down on his butt before Brie with a surprised look on his face. Brie laughed and went up as if to jump, but didn’t leave the ground at all, and instead just fell back to a sitting position facing her father. The two broke out in laughter. “Boom!” said Drizzt. “Boo boo!” said Brie.

You,” she said, bending an icy eye on Elizabeth, “come with me. You have much to explain, madam, and you can do it while Faulkner attends to your appearance.” “I am not,” Elizabeth said in a burst of frustrated anger, “going to think of my appearance at a time like this.” The duchess’s brows shot into her hairline. “Have you come to persuade them that your husband is innocent?” “Well, of course I have. I-“ “Then don’t shame him more than you already have! You look like a refugee from a dustbin in Bedlam. You’ll be lucky if they don’t hang you for putting them to all this trouble!” She started up the staircase with Elizabeth following slowly behind, listening to her tirade with only half her mind. “Now, if your misbegotten brother would do us the honor of showing himself, your husband might not have to spend the night in a dungeon, which is exactly where Jordan thinks he’s going to land if the prosecutors have their way.” Elizabeth stopped on the third step. “Will you please listen to me for a moment-“ she began angrily. “I’ll listen to you all the way to Westminster,” the dowager snapped back sarcastically. “I daresay all London will be eager to hear what you have to say for yourself in tomorrow’s paper!” “For the love of God!” Elizabeth cried at her back, wondering madly to whom she could turn for speedier help. An hour was an eternity! “I have not come merely to show that I’m alive. I can prove that Robert is alive and that he came to no harm at Ian’s hands, and-“ The duchess lurched around and started down the staircase, her gaze searching Elizabeth’s face with a mixture of desperation and hope. “Faulkner!” she barked without turning, “bring whatever you need. You can attend Lady Thornton in the coach!

Why on earth didn’t you say in the papers what had happened to my brother? Obviously my husband and Mr. Delham knew it. And you must have known you could provide the captain and crew to prove it.” Reluctantly, the assistant tore his gaze from the bench and said softly, “It was your husband’s idea to wait until the trial was under way before springing his defense on them.” “But why?” “Because our illustrious prosecutor and his staff showed no sign of dropping the case no matter what we claimed. They believed their evidence was enough for a conviction, and if we’d told them about the Arianna, they’d have kept stalling for him to look for more evidence to disprove Captain Granthome’s potential testimony. Moreover, the Arianna and her crew were on a voyage, and we weren’t completely certain we could locate them and get them back here in time to testify. Now our frustrated Lord Prosecutor has nothing readily at hand to use as rebuttal, because he didn’t anticipate this. And if your brother is never seen again, there’s still no point in his digging about for more circumstantial, incriminating evidence, because even if he found it-which he won’t-your husband cannot be tried twice for the same crime.” Now Elizabeth understood why Ian had looked bored and disinterested, even though she still couldn’t comprehend why he’d never softened when she’d explained it was Robert she was with, not a lover, and offered the proof of Mrs. Hogan’s letter and even the promise of her testimony. “Your husband orchestrated the entire maneuver,” the assistant said, looking admiringly at Ian, who was being addressed by the Lord Chancellor. “Planned his own defense. Brilliant man, your husband. Oh, and by the by, Mr. Delham said to tell you that you were splendid up there.

While his patience frayed, in the end, it was Meena who snapped first. Whether it was the fact a woman touched him, hanging on to his arm, gushing at how beautiful the wedding was, or the fact that Meena couldn’t handle the frustration of the last few days, it didn’t matter. With a snarled, “Get your hands off my husband!” Meena sliced through the crowd, skirts hiked. She leaped the last few feet and soared through the air to tackle the lioness at his side, who, as it turned out, was Loni’s cousin. But at the time, all he knew was his new wife was in full-on jealous mode and determined to scalp a wedding guest. As omega, Leo should have jumped in to calm the hot tempers— and stop the hair pulling. At the very least, he should have definitely pried Meena off the lioness before she got blood on her white dress. But… Well… He kind of liked it. While Leo had dated his fair share of women, he’d never had one show such a possessive side before. Definitely never had one go after a girl for daring to flirt with him. He didn’t know what it said about him, the fact that he enjoyed her jealous outburst. Feeling kind of smug about it, he took a moment to bask. Hers. Yes, he was hers, and she was his, at least on paper. Perhaps it was time to complete the bond and truly mate so that everyone would know they belonged to each other. Time to claim each other. First, though, he needed to pry her off the other woman before she literally spilled blood. Winding an arm around her middle, he lifted Meena, even as she continued to snarl at the woman on the ground. “Touch my man again and I will rip that hand from you and slap you with it!” Ah, the romantic words of a woman in lust. Tossing Meena over his shoulder, he ignored the amused glances of the crowd as he carted her away from the party. “I wasn’t done, Pookie,” she grumbled. “I’ve got better plans for that energy,” was his reply. And yes, she announced to all that, “Leo’s finally going to debauch me.” She wasn’t the only one fist pumping. The other ladies in the pride were cheering too while Leo fought not to blush, and poor Peter, he made a beeline for the bar. However, embarrassment wasn’t enough to stop him.

Sebastian encountered Cam in the hallway outside the reading room. “Where is he?” he demanded without preamble. Stopping before him with an expressionless face, Cam said shortly, “He’s gone.” “Why didn’t you follow him?” White-hot fury blazed in Sebastian’s eyes. This news, added to the frustration of his vow of celibacy, was the last straw. Cam, who had been exposed to years of Ivo Jenner’s volcanic temper, remained unruffled. “It was unnecessary in my judgment,” he said. “He won’t return.” “I don’t pay you to act on your own damned judgment. I pay you to act on mine! You should have dragged him here by the throat and then let me decide what was to be done with the bastard.” Cam remained silent, sliding a quick, subtle glance at Evie, who was inwardly relieved by the turn of events. They were both aware that had Cam brought Bullard back to the club, there was a distinct possibility that Sebastian might actually have killed him— and the last thing Evie wanted was a murder charge on her husband’s head. “I want him found,” Sebastian said vehemently, pacing back and forth across the reading room. “I want at least two men hired to look for him day and night until he is brought to me. I swear he’ll serve as an example to anyone who even thinks of lifting a finger against my wife.” He raised his arm and pointed to the doorway. “Bring me a list of names within the hour. The best detectives available— private ones. I don’t want some idiot from the New Police, who’ll foul this up as they do everything else. Go.” Though Cam undoubtedly had a few opinions to offer on the matter, he kept them to himself. “Yes, my lord.” He left the room at once, while Sebastian glared after him. Seeking to calm his seething temper, Evie ventured, “There is no need to take your anger out on Cam. He—” “Don’t even try to excuse him,” Sebastian said darkly. “You and I both know that he could have caught that damned gutter rat had he wanted to. And I’ll be damned if I’ll tolerate your calling him by his first name— he is not your brother, nor is he a friend. He’s an employee, and you’ll refer to him as ‘Mr. Rohan’ from now on.” “He is my friend,” Evie replied in outrage. “He has been for years!” “Married women don’t have friendships with young unmarried men.” “Y-you dare to insult my honor with the implication that… that…” Evie could hardly speak for the multitude of protests that jammed inside her. “I’ve done nothing to merit such a lack of tr-tr-trust!” “I trust you. It’s everyone else that I hold in suspicion.

He was so very gentle, despite his power and size, his fingertips sliding over her in light, beguiling patterns. His focus on her, his awareness of every sound, pulse, shiver, was absolute. His low voice tickled her ear as he murmured how beautiful she was, how good she felt, how hard she made him... and all the while, the thick shaft kept sinking deeper and deeper. By the time he filled her completely, she was feverish with need. A little sob of anticipation escaped her as he began to move. But every thrust was long and agonizingly slow, withholding the last bit of stimulation she needed. He held her more closely now, his weight on her from pelvis to breasts, while his hips rolled and circled, drawing up new surges of feeling. His mouth lowered to one of her breasts, licking and gently gnawing at the erect nipple. Squirming in frustration, she pushed her hips upward, but he pulled back reflexively. "No, love. I could hurt you." "You won't. Please... Keir..." "Please what?" "I need more." His laugh, a smolder of a sound, could have come from the devil himself. "I dinna think you can take more than this, darlin'." "I can." She strained against him. "This deep?" he asked, reaching places in her that had never been touched before. She shook at the pleasure of it. "Oh, God. Yes." His hands grasped her hips, keeping them angled firmly upward as he pumped in a steady rhythm. Slow in... slow out... "Faster," she said desperately. "No' yet," he whispered. "Please," she begged. His low, dark voice curled in her ear. "There's a saying we have about whisky: Slow fire makes sweet malt." She whimpered as he rolled his hips gently, his hardness caressing everywhere inside. The deliberate pace didn't alter, no matter how she tried to drive herself harder onto the rigid length of him. Every time she began to plead for more, his mouth came to hers in another one of those obliterating kisses. None of this was what she'd expected. Her husband had been a considerate lover, doing everything she liked and giving her exactly what she wanted. Keir, however, was doing the exact opposite. He delighted in tormenting her until she didn't recognize herself in the frantic creature she'd become. He was absolutely wicked, shameless, making love to her in ways that felt unimaginably good, always holding satisfaction just out of reach. "You give me so much pleasure, darlin'... more than a body can stand. The way you hold me so tight inside... like that... I can feel you pulling at me. Your wee, hungry body wants me deeper, aye? Put your hands on me... anywhere... ah, how I love your sweet touch...

He wanted somebody to give him a chance of asserting himself. He wanted it so urgently that he fidgeted in his chair, looked at this person, then at that person, tried to break into their talk, opened his mouth and shut it again. They were talking about the fishing industry. Why did no one ask him his opinion? What did they know about the fishing industry? Lily Briscoe knew all that. Sitting opposite him, could she not see, as in an X-ray photograph, the ribs and thigh bones of the young man's desire to impress himself, lying dark in the mist of his flesh--that thin mist which convention had laid over his burning desire to break into the conversation? But, she thought, screwing up her Chinese eyes, and remembering how he sneered at women, "can't paint, can't write," why should I help him to relieve himself? There is a code of behaviour, she knew, whose seventh article (it may be) says that on occasions of this sort it behoves the woman, whatever her own occupation might be, to go to the help of the young man opposite so that he may expose and relieve the thigh bones, the ribs, of his vanity, of his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us, suppose the Tube97 were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should certainly expect Mr. Tansley to get me out. But how would it be, she thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she sat there 96 Cheated or frustrated himself. 97 The London subway. 64 smiling. "You're not planning to go to the Lighthouse, are you, Lily," said Mrs. Ramsay. "Remember poor Mr. Langley; he had been round the world dozens of times, but he told me he never suffered as he did when my husband took him there. Are you a good sailor, Mr. Tansley?" she asked. Mr. Tansley raised a hammer: swung it high in air; but realising, as it descended, that he could not smite that butterfly with such an instrument as this, said only that he had never been sick in his life. But in that one sentence lay compact, like gunpowder, that his grandfather was a fisherman; his father a chemist; that he had worked his way up entirely himself; that he was proud of it; that he was Charles Tansley--a fact that nobody there seemed to realise; but one of these days every single person would know it. He scowled ahead of him. He could almost pity these mild cultivated people, who would be blown sky high, like bales of wool and barrels of apples, one of these days by the gunpowder that was in him. "Will you take me, Mr. Tansley?" said Lily, quickly, kindly, for, of course, if Mrs. Ramsay said to her, as in effect she did, "I am drowning, my dear, in seas of fire. Unless you apply some balm to the anguish of this hour and say something nice to that young man there, life will run upon the rocks--indeed I hear the grating and the growling at this minute. My nerves are taut as fiddle strings. Another touch and they will snap"--when Mrs. Ramsay said all this, as the glance in her eyes said it, of course for the hundred and fiftieth time Lily Briscoe had to renounce the experiment--what happens if one is not nice to that young man there--and be nice.

I have an-odd ability-to read very quickly.” “Oh,” Elizabeth replied, “how lucky you are. I never heard of a talent like that.” A lazy glamorous smile swept across his face, and he squeezed her hand. “It’s not nearly as uncommon as your eyes,” he said. Elizabeth thought it must be a great deal more uncommon, but she wasn’t completely certain and she let it pass. The following day, that discovery was completely eclipsed by another one. At Ian’s insistence, she’d spread the books from Havenhurst across his desk in order to go over the quarter’s accounts, and as the morning wore on, the long columns of figures she’d been adding and multiplying began to blur together and transpose themselves in her mind-due in part, she thought with a weary smile, to the fact that her husband had kept her awake half the night making love to her. For the third time, she added the same long columns of expenditures, and for the third time, she came up with a different sum. So frustrated was she that she didn’t realize Ian had come into the room, until he leaned over her from behind and put his hands on the desk on either side of her own. “Problems?” he asked, kissing the top of her head. “Yes,” she said, glancing at the clock and realizing that the business acquaintances he was expecting would be there momentarily. As she explained her problem to him, she started shoving loose papers into the books, hurriedly trying to reassemble everything and clear his desk. “For the last forty-five minutes, I’ve been adding the same four columns, so that I could divide them by eighteen servants, multiply that by forty servants which we now have there, times four quarters. Once I know that, I can forecast the real cost of food and supplies with the increased staff. I’ve gotten three different answers to those miserable columns, and I haven’t even tried the rest of the calculations. Tomorrow I’ll have to start all over again,” she finished irritably, “and it takes forever just to get all this laid out and organized.” She reached out to close the book and shove her calculations into it, but Ian stopped her. “Which columns are they?” he asked calmly, his surprised gaze studying the genuine ire on her face. “Those long ones down the left-hand side. It doesn’t matter, I’ll fight it out tomorrow,” she said. She shoved the chair back, dropped two sheets of paper, and bent over to pick them up. They’d slid beneath the kneehole of the desk, and in growing disgust Elizabeth crawled underneath to get them. Above her, Ian said, “$364.” “Pardon?” she asked when she reemerged, clutching the errant sheets of paper. He was writing it down on a scrap of paper. “$364.” “Do not make light of my wanting to know the figures,” she warned him with an exasperated smile. “Besides,” she continued, leaning up and pressing an apologetic kiss on his cheek, loving the tangy scent of his cologne, “I usually enjoy the bookwork. I’m simply a little short of sleep today, because,” she whispered, “my husband kept me awake half the night.” “Elizabeth,” he began hesitantly, “there’s something I-“ Then he shook his head and changed his mind, and since Shipley was already standing in the doorway to announce the arrival of his business acquaintances, Elizabeth thought no more of it. Until the next morning.

If marriage is the great mystery of the City, the image of the Coinherence - if we do indeed become members one of another in it - then there is obviously going to be a fundamental need in marriage for two people to be able to get along with each other and with themselves. And that is precisely what the rules of human behavior are about. They are concerned with the mortaring of the joints of the City, with the strengthening of the ligatures of the Body. The moral laws are not just a collection of arbitrary parking regulations invented by God to make life complicated; they are the only way for human nature to be natural. For example, I am told not to lie because in the long run lying destroys my own, and my neighbor's nature. And the same goes for murder and envy, obviously; for gluttony and sloth, not quite so obviously; and for lust and pride not very obviously at all, but just as truly. Marriage is natural, and it demands the fullness of nature if it is to be itself. But human nature. And human nature in one piece, not in twenty-three self-frustrating fragments. A man and a woman schooled in pride cannot simply sit down together and start caring. It takes humility to look wide-eyed at somebody else, to praise, to cherish, to honor. They will have to acquire some before they can succeed. For as long as it lasts, of course, the first throes of romantic love will usually exhort it from them, but when the initial wonder fades and familiarity begins to hobble biology, it's going to take virtue to bring it off. Again, a husband and a wife cannot long exist as one flesh, if they are habitually unkind, rude, or untruthful. Every sin breaks down the body of the Mystery, puts asunder what God and nature have joined. The marriage rite is aware of this; it binds us to loving, to honoring, to cherishing, for just that reason. This is all obvious in the extreme, but it needs saying loudly and often. The only available candidates for matrimony are, every last one of them, sinners. As sinners, they are in a fair way to wreck themselves and anyone else who gets within arm's length of them. Without virtue, therefore, no marriage will make it. The first of all vocations, the ground line of the walls of the New Jerusalem is made of stuff like truthfulness, patience, love and liberality; of prudence, justice, temperance and courage; and of all their adjuncts and circumstances: manners, consideration, fair speech and the ability to keep one's mouth shut and one's heart open, as needed. And since this is all so utterly necessary and so highly likely to be in short supply at the crucial moments, it isn't going to be enough to deliver earnest exhortations to uprightness and stalwartness. The parties to matrimony should be prepared for its being, on numerous occasions, no party at all; they should be instructed that they will need both forgiveness and forgivingness if they are to survive the festivities. Neither virtue, nor the ability to forgive the absence of virtue are about to force their presence on us, and therefore we ought to be loudly and frequently forewarned that only the grace of God is sufficient to keep nature from coming unstuck. Fallen man does not rise by his own efforts; there is no balm in Gilead. Our domestic ills demand an imported remedy.

Lady Thornton, how very good of you to find the time to pay us a social call! Would it be too pushing of me to inquire as to your whereabouts during the last six weeks?” At that moment Elizabeth’s only thought was that if Ian’s barrister felt this way about her, how much more hatred she would face when she confronted Ian himself. “I-I can imagine what you must be thinking,” she began in a conciliatory manner. He interrupted sarcastically, “Oh, I don’t think you can, madam. If you could, you’d be quite horrified at this moment.” “I can explain everything,” Elizabeth burst out. “Really?” he drawled blightingly. “A pity you didn’t try to do that six weeks ago!” “I’m here to do it now,” Elizabeth cried, clinging to a slender thread of control. “Begin at your leisure,” he drawled sarcastically. “here are only three hundred people across the hall awaiting your convenience.” Panic and frustration made Elizabeth’s voice shake and her temper explode. “Now see here, sir, I have not traveled day and night so that I can stand here while you waste time insulting me! I came here the instant I read a paper and realized my husband is in trouble. I’ve come to prove I’m alive and unharmed, and that my brother is also alive!” Instead of looking pleased or relieved he looked more snide than before. “Do tell, madam. I am on tenterhooks to hear the whole of it.” “Why are you doing this?” Elizabeth cried. “For the love of heaven, I’m on your side!” “Thank God we don’t have more like you.” Elizabeth steadfastly ignored that and launched into a swift but complete version of everything that had happened from the moment Robert came up behind her at Havenhurst. Finished, she stood up, ready to go in and tell everyone across the hall the same thing, but Delham continued to pillory her with his gaze, watching her in silence above his steepled fingertips. “Are we supposed to believe that Banbury tale?” he snapped at last. “Your brother is alive, but he isn’t here. Are we supposed to accept the word of a married woman who brazenly traveled as man and wife with another man-“ “With my brother,” Elizabeth retorted, bracing her palms on the desk, as if by sheer proximity she could make him understand. “So you want us to believe. Why, Lady Thornton? Why this sudden interest in your husband’s well-being?” “Delham!” the duchess barked. “Are you mad? Anyone can see she’s telling the truth-even I-and I wasn’t inclined to believe a word she said when she arrived at my house! You are tearing into her for no reason-“ Without moving his eyes from Elizabeth, Mr. Delham said shortly, “Your grace, what I’ve been doing is nothing to what the prosecution will try to do to her story. If she can’t hold up in here, she hasn’t a chance out there!” “I don’t understand this at all!” Elizabeth cried with panic and fury. “By being here I can disprove that my husband has done away with me. And I have a letter from Mrs. Hogan describing my brother in detail and stating that we were together. She will come here herself if you need her, only she is with child and couldn’t travel as quickly as I had to do. This is a trial to prove whether or not my husband is guilty of those crimes. I know the truth, and I can prove he isn’t.” “You’re mistaken, Lady Thornton,” Delham said in a bitter voice. “Because of its sensational nature and the wild conjecture in the press, this is no longer a quest for truth and justice in the House of Lords. This is now an amphitheater, and the prosecution is in the center of the stage, playing a starring role before an audience of thousands all over England who will read about it in the papers. They’re bent on giving a stellar performance, and they’ve been doing just that. Very well,” he said after a moment. “Let’s see how well you can deal with them.

Another one of my favorite posters at Facebook declares in big red letters, “Done is better than perfect.” I have tried to embrace this motto and let go of unattainable standards. Aiming for perfection causes frustration at best and paralysis at worst. I agree completely with the advice offered by Nora Ephron in her 1996 Wellesley commencement speech when she addressed the issue of women having both a career and family. Ephron insisted, “It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. And don’t be frightened: you can always change your mind. I know: I’ve had four careers and three husbands.”8 I

Amabel Hume-Campbell came from a stalwart Whig family. She was the daughter of Philip Yorke, second Earl of Hardwicke (whose brother Charles was made Lord Chancellor just before his death in 1770). Prodigiously clever, frustrated that she could not enter politics herself, Amabel wrote two studies of the French Revolution, and of French ambitions, in 1792 and 1796.1 As she went through life she garnered a bevy of titles, her husband’s and her own – Baroness Lucas, Lady Polwarth, Countess de Grey – but she always felt stoutly a Yorke. Her husband Lord Polwarth died when he was thirty, and by now, in her mid-forties, she had been almost fifteen years a widow, sturdily independent and a diligent letter-writer, as her scholarly, bluestocking mother Jemima had been.

Keep the right perspective Some people would love to have your problems. They would gladly trade places with you. They would love to have the job that frustrates you. They would love to sit in traffic in that car you don’t like. They would love to have your husband, who gets on your nerves. They would love to live in the house you think is too small. You may be thinking, “As soon as I get out of this neighborhood, then I’m going to be happy.” Instead, why don’t you choose to be happy right where you are? Choose to have a good attitude without thinking about what you have or don’t have. Your happiness is all about your approach to life. One man gets up and says, “Good morning, Lord.” Another man gets up and says, “Oh Lord, it’s morning.” Which person are you? You control what kind of day you’re having. You’re as happy as you want to be. It’s not your circumstances that keep you unhappy. It’s how you respond to them. A lot of times we’re making ourselves unhappy. You can’t change the traffic, the weather, or how others treat you. If your happiness is based on everything going your way and everybody treating you right, you will be frustrated. Before you leave the house, you need to make up your mind to stay positive and enjoy the day no matter what comes your way. You have to decide ahead of time. That’s what it says in Colossians 3:2, “Set your mind on the higher things and keep it set.” The higher things are the positive things. When you get out of bed in the morning, you need to set your mind for victory. Set your mind for success. Have the attitude: “This is going to be a great day. God’s favor is on my life. I’m excited about my future.” When your mind is set as positive, hopeful, and expecting good things, that’s when you’ll go places you’ve never dreamed. New doors will open. New opportunities, and the right people will come across your path. But if you don’t set your mind, negative thoughts will set it for you. You can’t start the day in neutral. If you’re passive, lying in bed, negative thoughts like these will come: “You’ll never accomplish your dreams. You’ll never get married. You’re too old. You’ll never get well. Nothing good ever happens to you. You’ll never get out of debt.

But Glass, in her research, discovered that if you dig a little deeper into people's infidelities, you can almost always see how the affair started long before the first stolen kiss. Most affairs begin, Glass wrote, when a husband or wife makes a new friend, and an apparently harmless intimacy is born. You don't sense the danger as it's happening, because what's wrong with friendship? Why can't we have friends of the opposite sex--or of the same sex, for that matter--even if we are married? The answer, as Dr. Glass explained, is that nothing is wrong with a married person launching a friendship outside of matrimony--so long as the "walls and windows" of the relationship remain in the correct places. It was Glass's theory that every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows. The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world--that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends; the walls are the barriers of trust behind which you guard the most intimate secrets of your marriage. What often happens, though, during so-called harmless friendships, is that you begin sharing intimacies with your new friend that belong hidden within your marriage. You reveal secrets about yourself--your deepest yearnings and frustrations--and it feels good to be so exposed. You throw open a window where there really ought to be a solid, weight-bearing wall, and soon you find yourself spilling your secret heart with this new person. Not wanting your spouse to feel jealous, you keep the details of your new friendship hidden. In so doing, you have now created a problem: You have just built a wall between you and your spouse where there really ought to be free circulation of air and light. The entire architecture of your matrimonial intimacy has therefore been rearranged. Every old wall is now a giant picture window; every old window is now boarded up like a crack house. You have just established the perfect blueprint for infidelity without even noticing.

You do have a choice in how your life plays out. Some of you are fighting your present situation and making no more progress than someone fighting quicksand. You fight your husband, and every verbal punch you land leaves a bruise on you as well. It is time to stop struggling in strife, bitterness, frustration, and disappointment. You are about to read God’s plan for a joyful marriage. It

Being married to someone on the spectrum is challenging. Some people might go so far as to say it’s impossible. A quick internet search on ‘Asperger’s marriage’ will turn up plenty of horror stories. As my husband would tell you, being married to someone with undiagnosed ASD is even more difficult. Without the explanation of Asperger’s and an understanding of the social communication impairments that accompany it, it’s natural for the nonautistic partner to assume that the autistic partner is being intentionally rude, selfish, cold, controlling, and a host of other negative things. Before my diagnosis, there was a frequent pattern in my marriage: I would unknowingly do something hurtful, then be surprised when Sang was upset by it. This inevitably triggered a downward spiral, Sang assuming I was being intentionally hurtful—because how could a grown adult not realize that it was hurtful—and me feeling bewildered about what exactly I’d done to cause so much upset. Often these discussions stalemated in a conversational dead end. I would sink into a shutdown or meltdown, where my only verbal response was, “I don’t know,” and Sang would resort to a frustrated refrain of “I don’t understand you.” Even typing those two phrases is hard because they bring back memories of some of the most difficult times in our marriage.

Ingersoll’s spotless reputation as a husband and father was a source of considerable frustration to those who would have loved to catch him in bed, dead or alive, with a young woman. One conservative critic, miffed by the many references in Ingersoll’s obituaries to his happy family life, grumbled that it was “not easy to perceive just why his private virtues have been so breathlessly brought forward and detailed with so much strenuous insistence; for surely husbands who are faithful, fathers who are loving, and friends who are generous and sympathetic, are not so rare in this our world as to make of them phenomena to be noted in the annals of the age.

It would be half-wrong to say it started with Sigmund Freud. It did not really start, in America, until the 1940s. And then again, it was less a start than the prevention of an end. The old prejudices -- women are animals, less than human, unable to think like men, born merely to breed and serve men -- were not so easily dispelled by the crusading feminists, by science and education, and by the democratic spirit after all. They merely reappeared in the forties, in Freudian disguise. The feminine mystique derived its power from Freudian thought; for it was an idea born of Freud, which led women, and those who studied them, to misinterpret their mothers' frustrations, and their fathers' and brothers' and husbands' resentments and inadequacies, and their own emotions and possible choices in life.

It was then, after my presentations to thirty-two generals, that I first began to see how similar the approach to leadership problems was throughout our civilization. After two days of presentations, a three-star general, the commander of an entire Army corps—two panzer divisions—stood up and said to me, “You know, one of our problems is that the sergeant-majors coddle the new recruits, and we keep telling them that such helpfulness will not make them very good soldiers in the field.” And then he turned to his fellow officers and said, “But from what Ed has been saying here the past two days, we’re not going to have any more luck changing the sergeant-majors than they are having trying to change the new recruits.” Now this man had three stars on his shoulder; how much more authority would you want? He commanded more weapons of destruction than exploded in all of World War II; how much more power do you need? Yet neither his authority nor his power were enough to ensure a “command presence.” And I began to think about similar frustrations reported to me by imaginative psychiatrists who were frustrated by head nurses, creative clergy who were stymied by church treasurers, aggressive CEOs who were hindered by division chiefs, mothers who wished to take more responsible stands with their children but who were blindsided by their chronically passive husbands, not to mention my experience of watching nine eager Presidents sabotaged by a chronically recalcitrant Congress. Eventually I came to see that this “resistance,” as it is usually called, is more than a reaction to novelty; it is part and parcel of the systemic process of leadership. Sabotage is not merely something to be avoided or wished away; instead, it comes with the territory of leading, whether the “territory” is a family or an organization. And a leader’s capacity to recognize sabotage for what it is—that is, a systemic phenomenon connected to the shifting balances in the emotional processes of a relationship system and not to the institution’s specific issues, makeup, or goals—is the key to the kingdom. My

You didn’t have to keep watch all night,” I said. “I wasn’t going to run away, you know.” “We don’t know,” Castor said. “We know nothing about you anymore, Helen. What in the name of all-seeing Apollo were you thinking, coming on this voyage, pretending to be a boy, doing something this--this--” He threw his hands up in frustration and blurted, “You must be as crazy as Herakles!” “Little sister, you could have died.” Polydeuces could hardly get the words out. “All of those days at sea, all the dangers, the raiders in Thrace, the bandits of the Clashing Rocks, even a simple misstep, like the one that killed poor Hylas--” His voice broke. He drew a ragged breath and added, “Why, Helen?” If I answered, would they understand? Their lives were always their own. They never had to fight for their liberty. When Jason came to Delphi seeking heroes, they joined his crew without asking anyone’s permission. No one demanded that they justify their choices. If you asked them why they had so much freedom, they’d react as if you wanted to know why the sky is blue. I’d be queen of Sparta one day. I’d marry because it would be my duty to have children and provide the land with its next ruler. If I was lucky, I’d choose my husband wisely and we’d love one another. But between You must do this because you’re a princess and You must never do that because you’re a girl, there was no time left for Do what you like, because you’re Helen. This quest, this adventure, might be my only chance to see what it meant to be myself. What would my brothers say if I told them that? “Don’t call me ‘Helen,’” I said firmly, brushing Polydeuces’ question aside unanswered. “Helen of Sparta wouldn’t be on this ship. I’m Atalanta.” “I was wrong. You’re crazier than Herakles,” Castor said.

Worst of all, Patrick kept praising her; he said he didn't know how she managed it all. He was trying to encourage her, though it made her feel alone, too, that her experience was untranslatable, obscure to him. He did not perceive that she was half-mad with fatigue, and yet she rose each day and knew she must play her part, she must be a mother to her son, she must be measured with him, never raise her voice to him, even when her blood was curdling with frustration. Yet often she felt so happy, so overwhelmed with love - everything was incoherent and ragged and she could not explain it to Patrick; she mostly blamed him when things were hard. She wanted him to experience it, too - the relentlessness, how it did not end, and you could never rest, how it was beautiful and it smashed you to pieces at the same time - but he usually came home after Calumn was in bed, found her collapsed and monosyllabic on the sofa. She told herself each day she must remember he was a wonderful father, a wonderful husband, this would soon be over - then everything got clouded, this chemical exhaustion took hold of her, and she slipped again.

When at last we arrived in Mannheim, I found that my apartment had been rented to a family whose young son was an amputee. I had conscientiously paid our landlady the entire time we were gone and now that I returned and needed my apartment I couldn’t do anything about it. I felt upset that these people usurped what was ours and I didn’t find much comfort when they offered us one of the bedrooms to live in. Frustrated as I was, there was nobody I could turn to. The rule of law had been suspended, so the only thing I could do was accept their offer. As I moved into what had been my bedroom, they reluctantly agreed that I could share the kitchen and use one of the burners on the stove. Climbing up into the attic, I found a bed that my husband Richard had used when he was a student. Now I had to cram onto it with the children every night and it always became a contest as to who got the pillow. None of us got much rest but the experience did bring us closer together. Frequently I wound up on the floor. Somehow I found a vicarious joy in seeing that my furniture, which the other family had been using, was becoming warped from moisture damage. It had been in a room where the window was blown out during one of the air raids. Of course this exposed everything to the weather, and so the frequent rains ruined the table and much of the other furniture. I really grew to dislike these people and with each passing day things became worse. One day while trying to balance three pots on one burner, I got an idea as to what I would do next….

The duchess of Retz, who was fluent in Latin and Greek (languages she had acquired as a result of her first husband’s frustrating lack of sociability, which had obliged her to live like a hermit out in the countryside for years, with only her books for company), was especially interested in the literary arts.

My niece, Anna, told about a poignant moment with her eight-year-old daughter. I love myself but I hate my thighs. I do. I also hate my post-baby, three-times-C-sectioned tummy. No matter how many planks, sit-ups, or miles I run, it will never be like it was when I was in college. And that makes me sad, frustrated, and sometimes angry. When my sweet husband tells me I look beautiful, instead of just thanking him, I answer back with a caveat: “Thanks, but I look fat.” I do this in front of my kids sometimes without realizing it. My boys always come back with, “No way, Mom. You look awesome” or “We think you’re beautiful!” But my daughter is just quiet. Watching. Listening. Later she’ll come up to me, hug me, and whisper, “I love you so much, Mommy.” A couple of months ago, when she was all dressed up, I saw her looking at herself in the mirror. I stopped and said, “Lillian, you look absolutely stunning!” She turned around and said to me very matter of fact, “No I don’t. I look fat.” I gasped! Doesn’t she know how precious she is? Doesn’t she know how beautiful she is? What a blessing she is? Doesn’t she know what a miracle her very existence is? And then I remembered all the times I answered her dad with the very same words. I was sad, ashamed, and most of all heartbroken. Lillian was eight years old. She understood that “fat” was how I felt about myself, so she decided she should feel that way too. Lillian and I had a long talk that day. I told her what a blessing her life is, and how God made her special, unique, and beautiful. I also apologized to her, my two sons, and my husband for not loving myself like I should. Lately, I’ve been saying “thank you” when I get compliments—something new to me—and it’s made all the difference. Now when I tell Lillian how gorgeous she is (which is all the time), she looks at me with her bright hazel eyes and says, “Thanks, Mommy! I think you’re really beautiful too!

Veronica nodded, silent tears running down her face, but was unable to speak around the lump in her throat. She looked at the ceiling, frustrated by her inability to speak. She took a deep breath and finally said, “Husband, meet Sarah. Sarah, meet your Daddy.

So many of the women who come to me for therapy are tormented by their own ambivalence. They want more time with the baby, but also more time alone. Their children bring them indescribable joy, but also make them crazy. They are grateful for their husbands’ calm and stability while simultaneously resenting them for being less affected by the transition to parenthood. They are crying in hopeless frustration one moment and feeling surges of love and affection deeper than they’ve ever known in the next. “I’m losing my mind,” these women say. “No, you’re not,” I respond. “You’ve lost many things now that you’re a mother, but your mind is not one of them.” In actuality, these women have found their minds; they have found crevices and corners they didn’t know existed and hadn’t planned to visit. The same is true of their hearts.

The problem to end all problems is that it's quite easy to find a man who's ready to die in battle, for an ideal, for glory, maybe even his favorite soccer team in some cases. But it is extremely difficult to find a man wedded to the idea of dying for his family, for his wife and children, for an apparently banal daily life; yet the truth is that this would be the most heroic act you could ever imagine. It's not the grand gesture of one moment in time but rather a martyrdom -- a long, constant, and incredibly fruitful martyrdom. It's difficult for a man to see the beauty in this daily sacrifice, often made up of a series of burdens, annoyances, frustrations, and setbacks. Only by stepping back and seeing things from a different, even eternal, perspective does the messy wall become a brave and definitive bas relief -- a work of art.

REACTIVE ABUSE Reactive abuse occurs when a husband or wife or both are unable to manage their negative moods, the frustrations of life, or their tempers in a mature way. As a result, when situations are provocative or there is stress, an eruption occurs. In reactive abuse, a person doesn’t stop to think about the wisest way to handle a difficult or irritating situation; he or she just reacts. We criticize, curse, yell, threaten, throw things, belittle, punch, slap, and even murder. The Bible warns us, “In your anger do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26, NIV).

She recognized that venting to her friends and her husband only fueled her frustration and wasted her time and energy.

Inside the white screen of the mosquito net, bathed in the sunlight streaming through the windows, she felt as if she were in her own little oasis. Isolated from the rest of the world and its hostility. Although she could barely see past the bright, sunlit cloth, a movement in the shadows behind the net caught her eye. She frowned, straining her eyes to see what it was when, slowly, the net parted to reveal a gigantic figure. The light shone on his body and face to reveal what turned out to be a dark-eyed, broad-shouldered man. A strange feeling was born in Bianca’s chest. A mixture of panic and embarrassment left her body in the shape of a scream. With no clear thoughts in mind, she yelled for someone to help her, until it dawned on her that she was in an unfamiliar apartment, in a town where no one knew about her, and where there was no one who could help her. She was alone, and the pervert in front of her undoubtedly wanted to take advantage of the situation. Stopping just enough to breathe and continue screaming, she got on her knees in the bed and kept on yelling at him, who then seemed to fall off whatever disgusting trance he was, and took a surprised step back. His fingers, still tangled in the mosquito net, ripped the fabric from the ceiling, exposing her further. Bianca knew she was on her own. She could not count on anyone else to save her. When that realization hit, an unknown instinct made its way inside her and all the accumulated frustration caused by the situation with the paparazzi, the betrayal of her husband and losing her company concentrated inside her like a laser to focus on a single aim: the man in front of her. Feeling powerful, she grabbed the sheet tight around her with one arm to cover the front of her body, set one foot on the ground, and grabbed the closest thing to her: the purse. Her screams, which initially were meant to ask for help, transformed into a sound of pure rage. Without taking her eyes off him, Bianca reached into her bag and threw everything she found inside it: a phone, an agenda, a bottle of water, a lipstick, a tissue, the box of condoms, a book. Even a small toiletry bag. When the bag was empty, she used it as a projectile too.

Leia let go of all the frustration she felt at Han’s long absences, all the bickering they’d never grown out of. In the end, she knew, he would always come through.

When I saw him about to take what I’ve wanted…” He releases a frustrated growl. “There was no way I could leave him breathing. No way I could let him feel you around his dick before I felt you around mine. But now that I’ve been inside you, no one else will ever be, including your fucking husband.

One AS husband wrote me the following very powerful e-mail (I have excerpted parts.):       I guess your heart probably sinks just a little when you get a message from an AS man. However, I’ve just read your book and I’d like to thank you for its honesty and indeed bravery.       I’ve been with my NT partner . . . for 25 years and have inflicted many distressing incidents on her similar to those you describe. But I can honestly say that none of them were ever designed to hurt. This feeling has probably made things much worse [for her]! I doubt I would have become so angry and defensive if I didn’t believe myself to be ‘innocent’ of the crime of intention. Hopefully I am coming to realise that I need to do more than just not intend to do harm. . .       . . . Reading your book I think I see parallels here between my fear of being overwhelmed in social or conflict situations. But I also see similarities to those feelings when my partner expresses her frustrations and needs - to admit to her point of view seems sometimes like I would be ‘destroyed.’ I mention this because I get the strong feeling that you equate spirituality and loving relationships. I feel that between myself and . . . there is something very important to us both, beyond companionship. For me there seems to have been a chance given that I would never believed I would have had. . .

Wanting to thank him for his gifts, she left the tent to find her husband. He was in the middle of the camp, with knights all around him. She paused as she saw him there. He was again garbed as a black-robed monk, but he had taken time to shave this morning. There was no sign of the sword she knew he had strapped to his hips and she could barely catch a glimpse of his mail-covered leggings beneath it. He was handsome, her prince. More so than any man in the group. He, Phantom, Ioan, Lutian, and three men she knew not at all were standing in a circle as they discussed some matter. Her heart light, she approached her husband from behind. Ioan was speaking. “You know, Abbot, I hear wormwood helps with that problem.” He held his hand up and crooked his finger down as if it were suddenly limp. All the men save Christian laughed, while Christian glared murderously at Lutian. “Look to the good of it,” Phantom said as he sobered. He appeared to be imparting grave advice to her husband. “I hear all men have trouble from time to time with their sexual performance. Mind you, I have no personal experience with that, but…” His voice trailed off as he looked past Christian to see Adara glowering at him. Struggling not to strangle the men who mocked him, Christian turned to see what had disturbed Phantom to find Adara standing behind him. His groin jerked awake at the vision she made in her finery. She was beautiful. The gown fit even better than he had hoped. Unlike her peasant garb, this one laced in the front and at the sides, pulling the cloth into a perfect fit that showed every lush curve of her body. The only thing that sparkled more than her jewels were her brown eyes. “Thank you,” she said softly before she kissed his cheek. “I had a most wondrous night.” Christian was too dumbstruck by his lust to even respond. Lutian bristled at her actions and if she didn’t know better, she’d swear he was jealous. “Nay. Tell me this isn’t so. Why are you kissing him, my queen? It was me. Me. I’m the one who told him what to do. He had no idea how to please you. None. He was lost and confused when he sought me out. He didn’t even know how to do the most basic thing. It was me, all me.” Every man there gaped at Lutian’s words. “Christ’s toes, Christian,” Ioan said in disbelief. “Are you a monk in truth? Don’t tell me you had to take advice from the fool on how to please a woman? You should have come to me. At least I know what I’m doing.” “You can’t be a virgin,” Phantom said. “What about that Norman tart in Hexham? Surely you did more than talk to her when the two of you vanished to her room?” “Nay,” another knight said. “I saw him drunk in Calais with two women.” “Aye,” another knight began. “I was with him in London when he vanished for three days with a widowed countess.” Christian ground his teeth as this conversation quickly degenerated, while Lutian continued to take credit for instructing him on how to please Adara. Lutian still held Adara’s attention. “I’m the one who got him—” Enraged, Christian lunged for the source of his current humiliation. “Christian!” Adara snapped as he seized her fool. “Don’t hurt Lutian.” He wanted to do much more than hurt the fool. He wanted to tear the man’s head from his shoulders. Growling in frustration, he let the fool go. “Thank you, my queen.” “’Tis my place to hurt him.” She glared at her fool and smacked him on his arm. “I fully intend to take this up with you later.” She walked over to Ioan. “And for your information, my lord…” She lifted his hand and put his index and middle finger upright. “I assure you that there is nothing wrong with Christian’s technique or prowess.

No woman wants to be a complainer, but in her attempt to make life good for her husband, her children, herself, and others, she often sees things that are wrong and tries to change them with her words. If you ever find your wife saying the same thing over and over to you out of the frustration of her heart, pray with her about it.

I’m having a hard time concentrating at work. Why in the world did I give the task force members offices on my floor? It seemed like a good idea at the time . . . to evict the old guard and move in the staff that represented the company’s one hope for the future. I regret it now, though, because I can’t go an hour without seeing Kathleen Burke. I can’t remember when I’ve felt this frustrated, and that’s saying a lot because I have two preschoolers at home. I noticed Kathleen’s attractiveness the day we met. I noticed it the same way that I might notice that a woman’s hair is gray. It was just a fact. It didn’t matter to me or affect me. A month and a half has passed since then. A month and a half of me sitting in the board room during task force meetings, watching Kathleen give presentations on newfound information she feels passionately about. She always feels passionately about the information she presents. A month and a half of looking up from my desk and seeing her slender body pass by my office in tailored skirts and silky shirts. A month and a half of disagreeing with her over new computer software. When she thinks I’m being pig-headed, her nose scrunches and her brown eyes blaze. My mom told me that her family is Irish. It’s obviously true. Kathleen has the fiery will and the red glint in her hair to prove it. She can’t seem to understand that I’m not being pig-headed about new computer software. I’m just being right. A month and a half of running into her in the break room. She tilts her head when she refills her coffee mug, which causes her long hair to slide over her shoulder and upper arm. A month and a half of hearing her laughter from a distance. A month and a half of receiving correspondence from her signed “Respectfully, Kathleen E. Burke.” Why the E? There are no Kathleen R. or B. or K. Burkes who work at Bradford Shipping. The E is pretentious. A month and a half of looking back every evening when I leave and seeing her office light on. Kathleen’s attractiveness is more than a fact to me now. She’s annoyingly pretty, she’s persistent, and she’s impossible to ignore. For more than two years, I’ve been loyal to Robin’s memory. That’s how I want things to continue. That’s how I like it. Willow and Nora are my life. I spend every hour outside of work with them, and I’m exhausted at the end of each day. There’s no room in my schedule or in my emotions for a relationship. I’m even more certain that I’m not meant to be a boyfriend or a husband now than I was when Robin died. So the distraction of Kathleen makes me feel like I’m betraying a commitment I made to myself. Which, in turn, makes me angry. I’ve been asking God to take away this stupid pull I feel toward Kathleen. Or better yet, to give her a new job in another city or state. My

Ken Wharfe In 1987, Ken Wharfe was appointed a personal protection officer to Diana. In charge of the Princess’s around-the-clock security at home and abroad, in public and in private, Ken Wharfe became a close friend and loyal confidant who shared her most private moments. After Diana’s death, Inspector Wharfe was honored by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and made a Member of the Victorian Order, a personal gift of the sovereign for his loyal service to her family. His book, Diana: Closely Guarded Secret, is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. He is a regular contributor with the BBC, ITN, Sky News, NBC, CBS, and CNN, participating in numerous outside broadcasts and documentaries for BBC--Newsnight, Channel 4 News, Channel 5 News, News 24, and GMTV. My memory of Diana is not her at an official function, dazzling with her looks and clothes and the warmth of her manner, or even of her offering comfort among the sick, the poor, and the dispossessed. What I remember best is a young woman taking a walk in a beautiful place, unrecognized, carefree, and happy. Diana increasingly craved privacy, a chance “to be normal,” to have the opportunity to do what, in her words, “ordinary people” do every day of their lives--go shopping, see friends, go on holiday, and so on--away from the formality and rituals of royal life. As someone responsible for her security, yet understanding her frustration, I was sympathetic. So when in the spring of the year in which she would finally be separated from her husband, Prince Charles, she yet again raised the suggestion of being able to take a walk by herself, I agreed that such a simple idea could be realized. Much of my childhood had been spent on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, a county in southern England approximately 120 miles from London; I remembered the wonderful sandy beaches of Studland Bay, on the approach to Poole Harbour. The idea of walking alone on miles of almost deserted sandy beach was something Diana had not even dared dream about. At this time she was receiving full twenty-four-hour protection, and it was at my discretion how many officers should be assigned to her protection. “How will you manage it, Ken? What about the backup?” she asked. I explained that this venture would require us to trust each other, and she looked at me for a moment and nodded her agreement. And so, early one morning less than a week later, we left Kensington Palace and drove to the Sandbanks ferry at Poole in an ordinary saloon car. As we gazed at the coastline from the shabby viewing deck of the vintage chain ferry, Diana’s excitement was obvious, yet not one of the other passengers recognized her. But then, no one would have expected the most photographed woman in the world to be aboard the Studland chain ferry on a sunny spring morning in May. As the ferry docked after its short journey, we climbed back into the car and then, once the ramp had been lowered, drove off in a line of cars and service trucks heading for Studland and Swanage. Diana was driving, and I asked her to stop in a sand-covered area about half a mile from the ferry landing point. We left the car and walked a short distance across a wooded bridge that spanned a reed bed to the deserted beach of Shell Bay. Her simple pleasure at being somewhere with no one, apart from me, knowing her whereabouts was touching to see. Diana looked out toward the Isle of Wight, anxious by now to set off on her walk to the Old Harry Rocks at the western extremity of Studland Bay. I gave her a personal two-way radio and a sketch map of the shoreline she could expect to see, indicating a landmark near some beach huts at the far end of the bay, a tavern or pub, called the Bankes Arms, where I would meet her.

You Set The Pace Because of the woman she was, our friend in Proverbs 31 had a home that exuded a good atmosphere, making it a place people wanted to frequent. Every home has an atmosphere. Maybe you don’t know what the atmosphere of your home is, but there are some who do – the people who frequent it. How would you describe the atmosphere in your home? Pick an adjective: Warm, peaceful, loving, cheerful, united? How about anxious, bitter, contentious, or frustrated? It is the woman in each home who creates the atmosphere. She is like the hub of the wheel around which the home revolves. Have you ever noticed how quickly your husband and children pick up your moods? When you’re grumpy, your husband seems to come home grumpy, too, and your children pick up that mood the second they come in from school. Then you wonder what is the matter with them! Try it tonight. An experiment in terror. Be a real first-class Oscar the Grouch at dinnertime, and see how long it takes the others to follow suit. Better yet, be the woman God wants you to be, and see how fast they respond positively!

And when Mary nodded, Pauline said, "You'd better hurry then, you know how how is," and laughed to show she would not be married to bald John Keane for all the tea in China. In her laugh was every confidence Mary had ever shared with Pauline about her husband's failings, every unguarded criticism, every angry, impromptu, frustrated critique of his personality, his manners, his sometimes morbid, sometimes inscrutable, sometimes impatient ways. A repository, Pauline and her laugh, for every moment in thier marriage when Mary Keane had not loved her husband, when love itself had seemed a misapprehension, a delusion (a stranger standing outside of Schrafft's transformed into an answered prayer), and marriage--which Pauline had had sense enough to spurn--simply an awkward pact with a stranger, any stranger, John or George, Tom, Dick, or Harry. A repository, Pauline and her laugh, her knowing eye, for all that Mary Keane should have kept to herself.

I do not worry very much about the young men and women, including many returned missionaries, who are of such an age that in all likelihood they will be married within a relatively short time. I feel they should not be put under pressure by counsel from Church leaders to rush into it. But neither do I believe that they should dally along in a fruitless, frustrating, and frivolous dating game that only raises hopes and brings disappointment and in some cases heartache. The young men should take the initiative in this matter. It goes without saying that they should be encouraged to live worthy of the companionship of a wonderful partner. They should be taught to put aside any thought of selfish superiority and recognize and follow the teaching of the Church that the husband and wife walk side by side with neither one ahead or behind.

Juliet bit her lip, frustrated by her thoughtless words of comparison, by her inability to mend the hurt she had caused. Then she looked down at Charlotte, who had blown herself out and now whimpered in heartbroken misery in her arms. She handed the baby — a peace offering — to her husband. Charlotte immediately hushed and looked up at him through her tears, her blue eyes wide and imploring as she reached up to touch his chin. And Juliet knew the exact moment when Gareth's kind, bruised heart melted into a puddle at his feet. "Ah, hell," he murmured, and as the baby smiled up at him, he reached down and thumbed the dampness from her cheeks, a reluctant smile already tugging at one corner of his mouth. Looking at this tender scene, Juliet was undone. How large and powerful his hand looked against Charlotte's tiny face. How little she looked in the cradle of his strong, capable arm. And what a wonderful father he already is, despite his shortcomings. Juliet's own gaze softened — and in that moment her husband glanced at her and caught her odd expression. He went still, and something deep and unspoken passed between them. "Well, I guess we'd better go," he finally said, tucking Charlotte's blanket around her shoulders. "It'll be tea time soon at this rate." "Am I forgiven, then?" "Forgiven?"  He grinned, slowly, like the sun breaking through a bank of clouds. Out came the dimple. Out came the sparkle in his blue, blue eyes. When he smiled like that, it was impossible to be angry at him for anything. Anything at all. He

I have rarely seen my husband angry. I boil over and blurt things out and generally find myself issuing apologies fairly frequently in our marriage. Jeff, though, is the embodiment of being slow to anger. The exception to this is if he is watching ESPN. Apparently there are a bunch of athletes out there that need to “learn how to play a kid’s game” or something. The whole thing is quite frustrating for him, which is understandable since he sees himself as some sort of father figure to the players. I mean, that is what I am assuming based on the fact that he spends a lot of time yelling, “COME ON, SON!” at our television.

Cecilia turned her gaze away from the girls and looked at the shimmering blue of their kidney-shaped swimming pool with its powerful underwater light: the perfect symbol of suburban bliss. Except for that strange intermittent sound, like a baby choking, that was coming from the pool filter. She could hear it right now. Cecilia had asked John-Paul to look at it weeks before he went to Chicago; he hadn’t got around to it, but he would have been furious if she’d arranged for some repair guy to come and fix it. It would have indicated lack of faith in his abilities. Of course, when he did finally look at it, he wouldn’t be able to fix it and she’d have to get the guy in anyway. It was frustrating. Why hadn’t that been part of his stupid lifelong redemption program: Do what my wife asks immediately so she doesn’t feel like a nag.

For Cambodians, like most Asians, they noted, few things are more important than saving face, protecting personal dignity. Yet “there is no cultural tradition for reconciling contrary opinions—or even for the acceptance of the existence of contrary opinions,” the Swedes wrote in their book, Every Home an Island. As a result, in any debate one side or the other is certain to lose face. “So when Khmer men resort to violence—when young men form gangs, or when a husband beats his wife, almost to death,” they are “impotent human beings who act out of frustration because their ‘cultural heritage’ offers no other way out of a humiliating situation. In most cases an act of violence is preferable to the loss of face.” Raoul-Marc

Of course, many women have suffered as well, especially during these war years: they have been raped by combatants, beaten by their husbands, left behind by their boyfriends, kicked out of school when pregnant. Some are left with little choice but prostitution, or becoming a concubine, in order to survive. In a society where violence has become omnipresent, where the law does not function, and where frustration and anger are everywhere, it is actually amazing that all this does not occur even more frequently.

There are two things you can’t change in this world: a husband who lets the dishes pile up, and a haunted house. Both lead to nothing but frustration, fear, and, eventually, a gruesome death.

I mourned now because when she had been alive I had not understood her. To the end, she frustrated my understanding, defied it with her own silences, her suppressions and elisions. Not about her past in the camps, per se. I was careful not to probe too hard into her tour through the bowels of hell, respecting her silence on the subject. No, what I blamed her for was another kind of silence. What I could not abide was her unwillingness to condemn the very system that had destroyed our family. Her refusal to impugn the evil that had deprived me of a father and left me motherless in those years when a boy most needs a mother's love. I am not a crybaby. I am not one to nurse old wounds. Others suffered more, God knows. I t would have been enough for me if she had said, just one time, Yes, what they did to you, to me, to our family - that was unforgivable. But she did not say those words, and her muteness - her apologism for the system that she insisted - to me! - 'would always take care of the children' - became a second, no less painful, abandonment. In the sixties and seventies, when I was compulsively reading samizdat, I wanted her to be as cynical and disillusioned as I was. I wanted her to be angry for the miseries that she had endured: the murder of her husband, the forcible separation from her child, seven years of bondage and humiliation and hunger. That all this failed to enrage her infuriated me all the more. For it left me to carry the anger for both of us.

In this regard I saw a sudden surge of private outreach surrounding each family and each child in need. Waves of individuals began to form personal relationships, beginning with those who saw the family every day—merchants, teachers, police officers on the beat, ministers. This contact was then expanded by other volunteers working as “big brothers,” “big sisters,” and tutors—all guided by their inner intuitions to help, remembering their intention to make a difference with one family, one child. And all carrying the contagion of the Insights and the crucial message that no matter how tough the situation, or how entrenched the self-defeating habits, each of us can wake up to a memory of mission and purpose. As this contagion continued, incidents of violent crime began mysteriously to decrease across human culture; for, as we saw clearly, the roots of violence are always frustration and passion and fear scripts that dehumanize the victim, and a growing interaction with those carrying a higher awareness was now beginning to disrupt this mind-set. We saw a new consensus emerging toward crime that drew from both traditional and human-potential ideas. In the short run, there would be a need for new prisons and detention facilities, as the traditional truth was recognized that returning offenders to the community too soon, or leniently letting perpetrators go in order to give them another chance, reinforced the behavior. Yet, at the same time, we saw an integration of the Insights into the actual operation of these facilities, introducing a wave of private involvement with those incarcerated, shifting the crime culture and initiating the only rehabilitation that works: the contagion of remembering. Simultaneously, as increasingly more people awakened, I saw millions of individuals taking the time to intervene in conflict at every level of human culture—for we all were reaching a new understanding of what was at stake. In every situation where a husband or wife grew angry and lashed out at the other, or where addictive compulsions or a desperate need for approval led a youthful gang member to kill, or where people felt so restricted in their lives that they embezzled or defrauded or manipulated others for gain; in all these situations, there was someone perfectly placed to have prevented the violence but who had failed to act. Surrounding this potential hero were perhaps dozens of other friends and acquaintances who had likewise failed, because they didn’t convey the information and ideas that would have created the wider support system for the intervention to have taken place: In the past perhaps, this failure could have been rationalized, but no longer. Now the Tenth Insight was emerging and we knew that the people in our lives were probably souls with whom we had had long relationships over many lifetimes, and who were now counting on our help. So we are compelled to act, compelled to be courageous. None of us wants to have failure on our conscience, or have to bear a torturous Life Review in which we must watch the tragic consequences of our timidity.

Patricia realized that for four years, these were the women she’d seen every month. She’d talked to them about her marriage, and her children, and gotten frustrated with them, and argued with them, and seen all of them cry at some point, and somewhere along the line, among all the slaughtered coeds, and shocking small-town secrets, and missing children, and true accounts of the cases that changed America forever, she’d learned two things: they were all in this together, and if their husbands ever took out a life insurance policy on them they were in trouble.

Over the next weeks and months, my daughters had to learn to live without their father, and me without my husband. In addition to the overwhelming, everyday tasks like buying groceries, making meals, and getting the girls to their activities, I suddenly had to navigate the legal system and file for divorce. I had to figure out the nearly impossible feat of owning a small business and solo parenting two active, preteen girls. I learned the hard way that you have to remove the leaves from the gutter if you don’t want your basement to flood. I had to muster the courage to pull the hair out of the shower drain. I had to somehow find the time and energy to decontaminate the entire house when the dreaded scourge that is lice made its unwanted appearance. And I had to do it all with the added anger, sadness, and sheer frustration that these were all things John used to take care of. As tempting as it was to collapse, I had two girls who needed me now more than ever. I needed my business to survive. I had a mountain of legal bills—tens of thousands of dollars and increasing daily. As a business owner, if I didn’t work, I didn’t get paid. Stepping away to take care of my mental and emotional state was a luxury I couldn’t afford. I had to balance what was best for my business in the long term with what the girls and I needed in the short term. I had to get through each day and keep moving forward. This meant I toggled back and forth between dealing with this trauma and running a business. I lived in a constant state of holding it all together, while simultaneously watching it all fall apart.

After years of cancer [my husband] is in remission. ... Sometimes my husband will, at the end of the day, the end of the work week, tell me about something happening at his job. ... When I'm listening to a description of a task that I fear is a waste of time - normal bureaucratic assignments, sounds familiar - I feel an anger that returns me to any room in the hospital. I feel that if someone on the management level wastes his time, they're wasting the time of every doctor and nurse and visiting friend whose expertise and labor and care made it possible for him to be, today, alive and working. Each hour of his work bears within it these other hours. But then, I think - furiously I think - this is true of every one of us. Our labor isn't ours; it bears within it others' work, others' time, their years of frustration, boredom, achievement. And our work radiates through the living hours of those we in no other way know.

she’d just read an article titled “Loneliness in Marriage” in a popular women’s magazine. The article stated that men and women have trouble communicating because they’re inherently different. When boys are growing up, they play with trucks and learn to solve problems and achieve goals. In contrast, when girls are growing up, they play with dolls and learn to talk about their feelings so they can develop emotional bonds with each other. Allison said she was relieved to discover that millions of women throughout America felt just as lonely and frustrated as she did because their husbands couldn’t deal with feelings or intimacy. She explained that her husband, Burt, was exactly like that— he was an accountant and understood numbers, but didn’t understand a single thing about emotions. She

What a peremptory woman she was! I wondered what had happened to her husband. Had he died of frustration because he couldn’t get a word in edgewise? Or had he divorced her for a more docile woman who welcomed small talk and could schmooze for hours about his gastritis and her bunions? My own guess was that Irma’s husband went out to buy a loaf of bread, vamoosed, and was now employed as a tobacco auctioneer.

She maintained her facade, but her little speech was edged with anger, tainted with frustration, searing with the hint that some part of her longed to scream the words and pummel his chest and hurl heavy objects at his head. Her sense of injustice, her lack of power, her subtle strength of character—he imagined them wrestling with each other like drunks in a brawl, wreaking havoc inside her, with only her politeness to keep them locked in. A better man would help her fight her battles, so she could have some peace.

When they called me in for an interview, I knew I had a chance, because I did well with first impressions, particularly when sober. It was everything following the first impression that troubled me. I could give you what you wanted. I just couldn’t keep giving it to you. Sitting across from me in a large conference room, an extremely put-together, reserved woman with long, curly brown hair asked, “What experience do you have with administrative work?” She wants honesty. “Well, I spent a summer as an intern at an office supplies business, but I don’t have a ton of experience.” I smiled and made a little face, as if to say, Can I really say that? As if I were a bit coy. “I graduated from UC Davis about a year ago, but stayed home with my baby,” I continued, “but I am a quick learner. I am very thorough.” My mother had told me once while I was sweeping out our motor home that I was “very thorough.” I stuck with it. “What do you think your greatest asset is?” She offered a quick smile between jotting notes. I noticed she was left-handed and that her blouse perfectly matched her cardigan. Humility. Tie it in with the honesty, Janelle. “I am willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. If the firm needs me to scrub toilets, I’ll do it. I’m here to work and I don’t have too much ego wrapped up in that.” She smiled again, and I felt bolstered. You’re doing great, Janelle. “We are extremely focused on collaboration. What is your greatest weakness?” Captain Morgan. Nope. Don’t say that. “Oh, well, I think it must be that I can be a bit of a perfectionist. I don’t want to let things go if they aren’t perfect, or close, you know? So sometimes I get frustrated with people who don’t have the same focus as I do.” I failed to mention that I thought most people around me were fucking idiots who should lose their jobs. That if I thought things, they were true, even if I had no evidence for them, and that, frankly, I was not exactly shining in my own life, and threatened to leave my husband on the daily. And, speaking of daily, I drank at that exact interval, and used to chase my brother around the house with a large kitchen knife. I kept all that to myself and crossed my legs.

It wasn't that she wanted so badly to remain in Paris; more than anything, she was incapable of deciding, of striking in a different, unknown direction, and was frustrated by her inability to release herself from her life as easily as her husband had, a top spiraling across a flat surface.

Moses was stuck on the backside of the desert for years, unaware of God’s future for him (Ex. 3:1). Naomi was trapped in Moab after the deaths of her husband and sons (Ruth 1:5). Elijah was stuck in the wilderness, feeling sorry for himself after his failure to bring about the revival he’d hoped for Israel (1 Kings 19:10). Ezekiel was stranded in Babylon at age thirty, frustrated he couldn’t enter his priestly service in Jerusalem at the temple (Ezek. 1:1). Peter was caught in a dark, depressive cycle on the Saturday before Easter (Matt. 26:75). Thomas was cast into faithless despondency when he missed the Savior’s appearance on Easter Sunday (John 20:24). Paul was stuck in Troas where a great door of evangelism was open for him, but he had no peace of mind because of anxiety about problems in the Corinthian church (2 Cor. 2:12–13). The apostle John was exiled on the Island of Patmos, lonely and unable to continue his ministry—or so he thought (Rev. 1:9).