Fundie Lite Wife Having Baby with Husband with Severe TBI

[yetanothermeg]

I read that as well. I didn't articulate that as well as I could. It seems that nothing about the accident made her rethink her plans. She was already asking for a baby while he was in the hospital.

That is the crazy part to me. Her husband is in the hospital with a TBI, the future is uncertain, and she is focused on getting pregnant. That would be the farthest thing from most people's minds in that situation.

[RachelB]

Like so many things, it's easy to say this kind of thing until it bites you in the ass RL.

When I was much younger, I dated a guy who was paraplegic and had a TBI, and fell in love with him. We married. Then I discovered what it was really like to be married to someone with his kind of TBI, the kind that honestly does not seem to have much of an impact on functionality in the short term--until you have to deal with the occasional rages/outbursts and have them directed at you, the short term memory loss, personality shifts with very little warning, ect. I was 23 and wanted a life again, one that did not involve me getting things thrown at me, cursed at, hit, because he just could not manage to maintain impulse control stamina. I did have a lot of comments like yours thrown in my face, since I was fundie-lite by that time but eh. Like I said. Until you live it, you don't know. I do not doubt there are better people than me that could keep going, and I walked into it "knowing" at least a bit of what I was getting into (not really though). I think if I'd stayed so that other people could see I was a good person who was capable of taking their vows seriously, I'd probably be dead by now, one way or the other.

IIRC, Burris' spouse became seriously disabled some time ago. So she has been bitten in the ass and is speaking from personal experience as well as conviction. She is living it.

My own position is that people of goodwill are going to disagree on this. (And also that self-care is important, and that no one is better equipped to know what you can handle than you are.)

[salex]

IIRC, Burris' spouse became seriously disabled some time ago. So she has been bitten in the ass and is speaking from personal experience as well as conviction. She is living it.

My own position is that people of goodwill are going to disagree on this. (And also that self-care is important, and that no one is better equipped to know what you can handle than you are.)

And, the range of what the specific disability is also varies wildly.

[Ave Maria]

I can't imagine divorcing for this (or any other reason except abuse -- which I suppose a TBI could cause) but I also don't think sex and babies would be on the table for me in this situation.

Not because of the consent issue -- I don't know the man enough to know if he can consent, but I am one of those in the camp that says that marriage prior to the injury does count for something. Someone who is single would need to select a person to marry/sleep with, while someone who was married before the accident has already made (hopefully) a responsible adult choice for their mate. Choosing to continue to have a physical relationship takes less conative ability, IMO, than the choice to start one in the first place.

However -- I don't think this man is ready to parent a child. Maybe in the future when his rages, etc, are more under control (perhaps with meds?) but right now it seems quite concerning.

[nolongerIFBx]

At the very least, giving her an oppotunity to live separately, even if her community looks down on divorce in these circumstances, typically it is more ok if "accomodations" are made because of the baby.

Agree. this baby may be her out. It wouldn't be acceptable for her to leave her husband but if she leaves to protect her child, that might be okay. If I remember, she married him after the TBI, but it still may have been way more than she planned on and she wants out. This could be the only acceptable way.

[Ave Maria]

Agree. this baby may be her out. It wouldn't be acceptable for her to leave her husband but if she leaves to protect her child, that might be okay. If I remember, she married him after the TBI, but it still may have been way more than she planned on and she wants out. This could be the only acceptable way.

They were married before the accident that caused the TBI.

[lipstickgoalie]

They were married before the accident that caused the TBI.

Yes. They were married about 5 years before the accident. You may be thinking of Ian and Larissa.

[persuas1ve]

Apparently they had their baby on the 23rd per the public portion of her FB

[miffy]

I think having a babby is a bad idea, very bad. But her decor might be even worse. It's like Pinterest on LSD.

[lipstickgoalie]

Sorry to keep posting repeatedly but I have been reading the whole blog from the beginning.

Cale's mental age according to his doctors (as reported by Kathleen) is 39 months. That is 3.25 years. I don't know if should be more or less disturbed by the fact that I guessed that. I know it doesn't make me feel any better that he is now a parent.

adarlingkindoflife.com/2011/03/we-gonna-do-this-one-step-at-time.html

[yetanothermeg]

Sorry to keep posting repeatedly but I have been reading the whole blog from the beginning.

Cale's mental age according to his doctors (as reported by Kathleen) is 39 months. That is 3.25 years. I don't know if should be more or less disturbed by the fact that I guessed that. I know it doesn't make me feel any better that he is now a parent.

adarlingkindoflife.com/2011/03/we-gonna-do-this-one-step-at-time.html

39 months? This whole thing is messed up.

[theologygeek]

Sorry to keep posting repeatedly but I have been reading the whole blog from the beginning.

Cale's mental age according to his doctors (as reported by Kathleen) is 39 months. That is 3.25 years. I don't know if should be more or less disturbed by the fact that I guessed that. I know it doesn't make me feel any better that he is now a parent.

adarlingkindoflife.com/2011/03/we-gonna-do-this-one-step-at-time.html

Some women have a desire so strong to have a baby that it gets to the point of irrational behavior. Some, not all. Kathleen probably transferred that maternal desire onto the caring of her husband because that was just like caring for a child, and for a while, it satisfied her. But now that there's a real baby in the picture, Cale may get kicked to the curb.

[Lucygoosey]

What's sad is that whether Kathleen leaves Cale or not, their baby will soon surpass his/her father in functioning skills. I can't imagine how he/she is going to feel having a Dad who has an adult body but the physical abilities and mental reasoning of a child. Cale may continue to improve, but it looks doubtful that he will have the ability to be a true father- he will essentially be like a sibling-probably more like a younger sibling.

[Marianne]

Sorry to keep posting repeatedly but I have been reading the whole blog from the beginning.

Cale's mental age according to his doctors (as reported by Kathleen) is 39 months. That is 3.25 years. I don't know if should be more or less disturbed by the fact that I guessed that. I know it doesn't make me feel any better that he is now a parent.

adarlingkindoflife.com/2011/03/we-gonna-do-this-one-step-at-time.html

This is sexual abuse. A 3,25 years old can't consent to sexual relationship.

[Lucygoosey]

This is sexual abuse. A 3,25 years old can't consent to sexual relationship.

Just imagine if the genders in this situation were reversed- a husband impregnating his wife who suffered a severe brain injury and had the mental age of a 39-month-old. I agree, it's wrong. Nobody should have sex with someone who doesn't have the intellectual capacity or maturity to give consent.

[Marianne]

Just imagine if the genders in this situation were reversed- a husband impregnating his wife who suffered a severe brain injury and had the mental age of a 39-month-old. I agree, it's wrong. Nobody should have sex with someone who doesn't have the intellectual capacity or maturity to give consent.

This. I've a friends who have been RAPED by his "girlfriend". he has quit her, but he don't admit that it's rape. When we tell him "Imagine if you were a girl and her a man", he says "Yes, this is rape, but it's not the case, i've not been raped because my body react". He is destroy, and won't admit it, and feel guilty because he have not enjoyed what was rape. Our society need to learn that rape is about consent, not about gender.

[PurpleSheepleEater]

Apparently they had their baby on the 23rd per the public portion of her FB

Yep. Baby girl named Nora.

[Joan of Snarc]

Some women have a desire so strong to have a baby that it gets to the point of irrational behavior. Some, not all. Kathleen probably transferred that maternal desire onto the caring of her husband because that was just like caring for a child, and for a while, it satisfied her. But now that there's a real baby in the picture, Cale may get kicked to the curb.

She is definitely irrational. Talk about living in denial. What is she thinking bringing a baby into this situation? Sadly (?), or would it ironically (?), Cale, with a mental age of 3.25 years, seemed more worried about it than her. WTF?

[Burris]

Like so many things, it's easy to say this kind of thing until it bites you in the ass RL.

Since you know nothing about me, that's the kind of comment that will bite you in the ass.

My husband suffered lung failure - no one knows exactly why; an embolism or a mixture of flu and pneumonia - and spent six months in ICU in 2012/13.

The ICU. Six months in the ICU.

For three of those months he was in a medically induced fugue so his lungs could heal. He didn't suffer brain damage - or at least nothing in this past year suggests he has - but now he breathes through a hole in his throat. Every single night since he came home, his vent beeps an alarm at least two or three times - and I can hear him gurgling, like a perpetual death rattle. For me, that aspect of it is especially nightmarish.

I bathe him, dress him, take care of his hygiene, change his sheets, change his trach strap, check his stats, regulate his oxygen, charge his wheelchair and his backpack rebreather.

I expected he would have problems with his bones and breakage as he got older, because of a pre-existing condition, but I did not expect that.

(And for all the shittinessof it, that experience ranks a distant third among the worst things I have ever seen or done.)

It’s for the unexpected that the mutual promise of fidelity is so important.

I love my husband and he loves me. Our time together makes me happy and I hope we have many more years to figure things out.

That doesn’t mean I was happy to reach 40 years only to stay home all day, every day, changing bed pans and fetching everything from supper to clean soaker pads.

When I was much younger, I dated a guy who was paraplegic and had a TBI, and fell in love with him. We married. Then I discovered what it was really like to be married to someone with his kind of TBI, the kind that honestly does not seem to have much of an impact on functionality in the short term--until you have to deal with the occasional rages/outbursts and have them directed at you, the short term memory loss, personality shifts with very little warning, ect.

So you married a man who was occasionally abusive because he suffered a TBI. Others marry real monsters who are consistently cruel, and they stay with those men for some God-awful reason.

You're husband, on the other hand, may not have had any choice in the matter. Maybe he could have benefited from mood stabilizing medication to control those rages. I don't know.

I did have a lot of comments like yours thrown in my face.

I made a general statement about this topic. You threw it in your own face.

Like I said. Until you live it, you don't know.

And it never once occurred to you that at least some of those comments were backed by experience?

I do not doubt there are better people than me that could keep going, and I walked into it "knowing" at least a bit of what I was getting into (not really though). I think if I'd stayed so that other people could see I was a good person who was capable of taking their vows seriously, I'd probably be dead by now, one way or the other.

Uh huh - because obviously it's only the "better people" who actually keep their vows. Well, I'm not that, so perhaps, just maybe, even ordinary people, and even sub-par human beings, stay married when things go wrong medically.

Our marriage started as a business arrangement. It eventually grew into something far better, but it started out cold and calculated: Each of us had something the other needed, and so we signed the compact.

You married that man knowing full well you were signing up not only for him as he was, but also for the changes that might occur in him as time went on. You knew this and you went ahead anyway.

I'll do you the kindness of not assuming you failed to find appropriate respite care and treatments for his mood disorder before opting to divorce him.

[Sobeknofret]

Burris, I love you. Truly I do, and I admire your spirit like whoa. You're a remarkable woman, and your words always give me hope that someday I might be the kind of person you are.

[Burris]

Burris, I love you. Truly I do, and I admire your spirit like whoa. You're a remarkable woman, and your words always give me hope that someday I might be the kind of person you are.

No - actually I'm not. Ever.

[treemom]

I don't think anyone is ever obligated to stay married to someone else.

I did marry for love and I stay married for love. It's ok for love to be a requirement in the marriage, because I remember that in my vows too.

[latraviata]

Like so many things, it's easy to say this kind of thing until it bites you in the ass RL.

When I was much younger, I dated a guy who was paraplegic and had a TBI, and fell in love with him. We married. Then I discovered what it was really like to be married to someone with his kind of TBI, the kind that honestly does not seem to have much of an impact on functionality in the short term--until you have to deal with the occasional rages/outbursts and have them directed at you, the short term memory loss, personality shifts with very little warning, ect. I was 23 and wanted a life again, one that did not involve me getting things thrown at me, cursed at, hit, because he just could not manage to maintain impulse control stamina. I did have a lot of comments like yours thrown in my face, since I was fundie-lite by that time but eh. Like I said. Until you live it, you don't know. I do not doubt there are better people than me that could keep going, and I walked into it "knowing" at least a bit of what I was getting into (not really though). I think if I'd stayed so that other people could see I was a good person who was capable of taking their vows seriously, I'd probably be dead by now, one way or the other.

When you wrote this, apparantly you didn't aniticipate an answer from the epitome of self-sacrifice and selflessness of almost inhuman proportions.

Personally I think, somebody doesn't have to pay and suffer for a once made mistake or misjudgement.

Staying in an abusive and unequal (nurse/patient) marriage is not exactly what we expect from people, unless you are Lori Alexander. I can imagine you didn't take the decision to leave your ex lightly.

Every situation is different, people are different, even the disabled ones. I think it is inappropriate to judge and say one can't divorce sick partners.

Most abusers suffer from some sort of mental disorder, does that mean one has to stay married with them?

You know what was coming, really? Like the girl getting pregnant and must have the baby as a sort of punishment?

Staying in a disfunctional (for any reason) marriage doesn't benefit anybody.

Vows? I couldn't care less.

You know how many patients are abused by their care givers, because of severe mental stress and fatigue?

Tigerchild I am entirely with you on this one. Only you know to which extend you were able to cope with the situation, or not and nobody, nobody has the right to judge you.

[dianapavelovna]

I find her use of the picture of him sitting, looking to me pretty dejected and concerned, praying on his bed. I find her taking and posting the picture as well as telling us his prayers, as somewhat disdainful/disloyal to him as a husband.

I find the whole blog disingenuous, but especially this picture/post. The artsy framing of the shot, making sure to get the gushy decor in. To me, a better choice at that moment would've been to go in and pray with him, or leave him his privacy. (Sure, I realize she may've gone to him after taking the photo, but I can't help thinking that she took that photo with the thought of how nice it would look on her blog.)

Issues of people with ID consenting to sex and parenthood and spouses choosing or not choosing to stay with a disabled spouse are complicated and, I think, very personal and specific. I'm not comfortable making general statements about it. However, Kathleen's desire to have a baby does not seem to have waned at all since the time before the accident (which is totally understandable), but she doesn't appear to have thought critically about the implications of having a baby with Cale at his current level of functioning. I agree that being unable to even keep a dog for four days is a big red flag in this situation.

As for the theory that she is going to use the baby as her out...if that were true, I'd find it much more distasteful than divorcing Cale and finding a new partner. How would he feel losing his wife and daughter? How confusing and upsetting would that be for him? (I realize that theory is only speculation.) As others have mentioned, it is possible to end the romantic relationship with someone but maintain a close and loving relationship with them.

Also, lipstickgoalie, I think it was you who mentioned this in the Lockwood thread....when ARE fundies going to stop center aligning their blogs? Blech.

[Burris]

When you wrote this, apparantly you didn't aniticipate an answer from the epitome of self-sacrifice and selflessness of almost inhuman proportions.

Always dogging my comments with this horseshit - and it's because I think you're not only a racist asshag, but also because I disagreed with how you felt about the death of your adult son.

God damn, am I ever glad you're retired, Latraviata, because I would hate to think someone like you has charge over the mental healthcare plans of other people.

Personally I think, somebody doesn't have to pay and suffer for a once made mistake or misjudgement.

Wow have you ever deluded yourself, Ms. 'Muslims are a great evil because a few of them are part of terrorist organizations.' You think other people should suffer for the mistakes of their kin – but somehow the morality here is different. You just move those goal posts wherever the hell you want, don’t you?

Staying in an abusive and unequal (nurse/patient) marriage is not exactly what we expect from people, unless you are Lori Alexander. I can imagine you didn't take the decision to leave your ex lightly.

Oh, how nice: Another pot shot at me - because it's apparently unbelievable to you that I can have a rich and fulfilling intellectual relationship with someone who, through no fault of his own, now requires a high level of personal care.

Lori Alexander would call it joy; I don't. I think it sucks and I'll be happy when my husband's physio helps him to regain so many of the skills he lost - but he is never physically going to be the young man I married. If accident hadn't changed him, age eventually would - even as it will change me - and you; a highly educated woman with a knowledge of psychology who, instead of ignoring the posters she hates, decides to pour a bucket load of horseshit on them for no discernable reason beyond that I hurt your fee-fees once approximately a year ago (if not longer).

Get over it.

Every situation is different, people are different, even the disabled ones. I think it is inappropriate to judge and say one can't divorce sick partners.

If you're not going to take your oaths seriously, then don't take them at all. People with disabilities aren't merely commodities to be used then cast aside when they become too inconvenient. You of all people should know that.

Most abusers suffer from some sort of mental disorder, does that mean one has to stay married with them?

Nope - I think people should drop habitual abusers as fast as they can. Daily cruelty isn't a sickness; it's a choice.

You know what was coming, really? Like the girl getting pregnant and must have the baby as a sort of punishment?

That isn't the topic under discussion. But nice try.

Staying in a disfunctional (for any reason) marriage doesn't benefit anybody.

Because obviously disability will, in itself, cause marital dysfunction.

Vows? I couldn't care less.

Then, once again, I'm glad the clients you once had no longer need to worry about your breaking the oaths you swore before taking a job in human services.

You know how many patients are abused by their care givers, because of severe mental stress and fatigue?

Two things.

One: My husband is my spouse, not my patient.

Two: We access as many community services as we need. My husband is of sound mind and also makes his own arrangements. That doesn't change the fact many of the day-to-day tasks fall on me, and it doesn't change my opinion of people who swear an oath and then break it when it becomes inconvenient to keep their word.

Caregiver burnout is a real thing, as you already know, and so I also seek help for it. (Your assumptions make me sick. You make me sick.)

That still doesn’t change my daily reality. It still doesn’t change my having to watch the person I care most about in the world suffer.

The poster to whim I responded opened with a volley concerning how it might bite me in the ass one day because, duh, no one on here could possibly know what she's talking about: She's one of one. I answered her, and then here you are to enlighten me and everyone else as to what sort of person I am. How noble of you.

It's like my posts are your crack, or something.

ETA: Moral paragon? LOL! I know which comments of mine you missed. A while thread of self-incriminating evidence. You'd still harangue me if you knew, but for entirely different reasons.