Ex-spouse Post #1!
I owe it to her to start off with an initial post about my ex-!
There are so many facts to share with you that I will post a few and then change the topic for awhile, and then, return later for more consideration of my Tex-Mex-ex-. I was a trustworthy Boy Scout, growing up, and a trustworthy adult Scouter, too! I know now that my ex- was raised in a family, if not a culture, which subverted trustworthiness with its own form of sophistication. Check out the definition of sophistication in a dictionary -- you can then figure why I prefer never to be a "sophisticate!"
My ex's name is Raquel. She was raised in a Texas border town. Margo, her mother, said Raquel was so petite when she was born that the top of her head would fit inside a tea cup. For good reasons learned since, I suspect that fact depicted a symptom of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) which would explain, if not excuse, a lot of ex's behavior years later. The is the first time I have ever revealed this suspicion to anyone, anywhere -- earlier, when I was the first to label her father's alcoholism, I began to incur ex's well-disguised and well-ingrained passive-aggressive vindictiveness.
In protectiveness of her father (and probably herself), she over-used the defense mechanisms of denial and projection, personality characteristics (flaws) in someone with a "Scarlett O'Hara" profile on the renown Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). It only occurred to me after our divorce that ex- may well have been an FAS baby -- once I realized her mother also had a history of regular drinking going back to working at Margo's father's pub in WW2 England. The post-war period when Margo was pregnant with Raquel was undoubtedly a time of both great personal stress and change as well as great celebration -- both of which almost certainly led to alcohol overuse. And, sign of institutionalized ignorance, it would be 35 years more before the US government would require liquor labels to warn: Alcohol use during pregnancy causes birth defects! [The sins of MOTHERS are also visited upon their children.]
I owe it to her to start off with an initial post about my ex-!
There are so many facts to share with you that I will post a few and then change the topic for awhile, and then, return later for more consideration of my Tex-Mex-ex-. I was a trustworthy Boy Scout, growing up, and a trustworthy adult Scouter, too! I know now that my ex- was raised in a family, if not a culture, which subverted trustworthiness with its own form of sophistication. Check out the definition of sophistication in a dictionary -- you can then figure why I prefer never to be a "sophisticate!"
My ex's name is Raquel. She was raised in a Texas border town. Margo, her mother, said Raquel was so petite when she was born that the top of her head would fit inside a tea cup. For good reasons learned since, I suspect that fact depicted a symptom of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) which would explain, if not excuse, a lot of ex's behavior years later. The is the first time I have ever revealed this suspicion to anyone, anywhere -- earlier, when I was the first to label her father's alcoholism, I began to incur ex's well-disguised and well-ingrained passive-aggressive vindictiveness.
In protectiveness of her father (and probably herself), she over-used the defense mechanisms of denial and projection, personality characteristics (flaws) in someone with a "Scarlett O'Hara" profile on the renown Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). It only occurred to me after our divorce that ex- may well have been an FAS baby -- once I realized her mother also had a history of regular drinking going back to working at Margo's father's pub in WW2 England. The post-war period when Margo was pregnant with Raquel was undoubtedly a time of both great personal stress and change as well as great celebration -- both of which almost certainly led to alcohol overuse. And, sign of institutionalized ignorance, it would be 35 years more before the US government would require liquor labels to warn: Alcohol use during pregnancy causes birth defects! [The sins of MOTHERS are also visited upon their children.]
posted by Richard A at 10:16 PM
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