I don’t believe in ultimatums. It seems to me that if someone is doing something so serious — so drastically hideous and intolerable that it’s a total deal-breaker for you — then the deal has already been broke, and there’s no going back.

I learned a long time ago that trying to make someone else change is a hell of a lot of work. And I’m lazy. I much prefer to change something myself (my perspective, my expectation, my proximity to them, my future involvement, etc). Issuing ultimatums seems way too… clunky… for every-day practicality. It’s slow, and ugly, and never, ever genuinely useful.

But what I particularly can’t relate to is issuing ultimatums in marriages. Personally, I promised to love/honour/etc for better/worse/etc — I didn’t promise “with conditions”. The only thing that I can imagine me (and this is just me, remember) drawing a line in the sand over, would be abuse of my children or myself (my own rough definition of ‘abuse’ being something that causes significant harm, or that puts one in line of same).

But, hang on, if I were ever in a situation that incredibly significant that I’d seriously consider leaving my husband, would I honestly want to issue an ultimatum to him, or would it just be game over, right then and there, the first time it happened?

Fortunately, I don’t know. I’ve never walked in those shoes and unless I ever do, my postulating and $4 will get you a cup of coffee. Meanwhile, I can speculate ’til the cows come home and say that I’d be out of there so fast, his head would spin. On the floor. And it wouldn’t be a surprise to him in the least, because he knew this about me well before we married. He would expect it from me. Just as, if some brain injury ever made me change and I became a legitimate danger to him or our kids, he knows he’d better damned well leave me pronto and not look back, because the woman he married — the me who would be trapped in that fucked-up person — would kick his ass to kingdom come if he ever let me be abusive.

Hmm, somehow that didn’t come out quite right… Oh, well.

What’s my point? I’m glad you asked, because I’m pretty sure I had one when I started this. Now where did I leave it? Oh, right.

We, as a society, have gotten COMPLETELY stupid about what we won’t tolerate and what we will. Learn to piss or get off the pot, will ya? Don’t do that ridiculous hover thing that makes ya spray all over, fouling up a huge area for a lot of people. And then, as if that’s not bad enough, when you do eventually walk out, you act like you don’t know better or like you had no part in it, but you expect somebody else to have it cleaned up by the time you get back! Puhlease….

What prompted this rant was a copy of a letter to the “Dear Miriam” advice column that is making its rounds in email, being sent as a funny thing. And it is amusing in some ways, but it’s also sad and fucked up.

If Miriam’s responding advice was deliberate, though, it gives me hope.