The Torment of a Neglected Husband
Dear Prudence,
I'm married to a wonderful woman who has been everything I could ever want in a partner. There has been only one recurring issue between us that has ever caused strain: thespianism. I didn't find out until after college and we had moved in together (she gave it up for four years to study) that she is a local-theater nut. It frequently keeps her out of the house four to seven nights a week. This isn't a once-in-a-while thing, either; she'll do four shows a year, meaning she's in a show more often than she isn't. I've tried doing shows with her, but it just isn't my thing. All this drama has me feeling like I'm a second priority in her life, and it constantly means we're not doing things together. What's really brought this to a head is that she has decided to start auditioning for summer shows (she's a teacher and has summers off) that will possibly have her away from the house for 90 days straight. I'm feeling conflicted—this isn't what I want in my marriage, but I don't want to stand in the way of her dreams. —Another Opening, Another Show
-an actual letter written to the advice column on Salon.com
Believe me, I’m not in the habit of reading advice columns. At least not since Ken & Ariel had their regular space in Barstool Sports and I used to check it every issue to see if they’d responded to my letter about my obsessive, unhealthy Bill Belichick fetish. But I came across the link to this particular letter on the home page of my email account last week. And it’s noteworthy because except for a detail or two, for all intents and purposes I could’ve written it.
I am married to a wonderful woman. She is everything I want (save for her severe lack of Super Bowl rings). She is a teacher. And she is heavily involved in community theater. Take away the whiney tone, the bitchy self-pity and the fact that I’d sooner have a crazy neighbor’s chimpanzee eat my face than ever write to the Salon.com advice column, and everything else in this letter applies to me.
My Sweet Irish Rose is a local theater nut. I’m glad to finally come clean and admit that publicly. She’s into community theater and so are practically all her friends. Thespianism is rampant in our soceity, but it’s something not many people talk about. It’s a silent epidemic. Researchers don’t know exactly how many people it affects because so few people are willing to admit to it. But it’s more pervasive than anyone thinks, I promise you. If you’re reading this on a crowded T train, at work or in a bar, chances are someone near you has this affliction. The woman next to you might have played Mrs. Fezziwig in “A Christmas Carol” last December. The guy across from you might have been Yertl the Turtle in “Seussical: The Musical” last fall. The homeless guy in the urine-soaked pants... well he probably hasn’t, but anyone else is a suspect. Community theater people might live, think and act differently than the rest of us, but they look the same. They live among us, indistinguishable from normal folk but very, very different. Like the aliens Rowdy Roddy Piper needed those special sunglasses to see in “They Live,” the vampires in “Twilight” or Scientologists.
It’s hard to say when My Reason to Live first became addicted to local theater. On that blessed day I met her, she was already using musical theater recreationally. She experimented with it in college. I’d seen the pictures of her doing Gilbert & Sullivan at St. Mary’s College in South Bend and I just shrugged it off as youthful indiscretion. She was a music major, it was popular among the SMC (“smick”) chicks and seemed like the kind of things kids try when they go away to school. So I didn’t make an issue of it. When we were dating she relapsed once, doing some Sondheim in Jamaica Plain. But a wedding and two Little Tax Deductions later her show abuse seemed like a thing of the past.
Let me digress here for a second and point out that while I try not to judge, musicals just weren’t something I grew up around. A couple of my best friends growing up admitted they liked them. Whereas I was watching “Patton” every time it came on, I had buddies whose all time favorite movie was “Sound of Music.” Again, I’m not going to lecture anybody, but that stuff just didn’t go on in my house. Maybe it comes from having three older brothers who didn’t roll like that. Or reading all those lame stories about how Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to pay for “No, No Nanette” ruined the whole genre for me forever. Whatever the reason, musicals were just never my thing.
I admit that when I was younger, I tried a couple of Broadway shows. I took my bride-to-be up to Toronto to see the Sox play and see “Phantom of the Opera.” But I was clueless. Like a CEO’s wife at the Super Bowl, I had no idea what I was watching and had to ask a ton of questions. “Are all shows like this? Is this music good? Is he a good singer? Are the beers really 9 bucks American?” I’d never done it before and didn’t know if I was having fun. But I did know it was costing me about 30 Fenway bleacher seats to sit there and watch a guy in a mask sing a song that sounded very much like “School Days School Days.”
Back to the “Co” in My Co-Dependent Relationship and how she got bitten the acting bug. As is so often the case, she got turned onto it by another user. A junkie. Her girlfriend wanted her to audition for a local production of “Sound of Music” but My Trophy Wife wasn’t interested. “We’re too busy, we’ve got the kids and the rehearsal schedule would be too hard.” “What’s the harm?” I said. “So you get the part of a nun or something, how hard can it be?” Four hours later she came home and said “I’m Maria.” As in the Julie Andrews part. The lead role. It might as well been OxyContin. She was hooked.
Like most addictions, it’s the family that suffers most. I’ve sat there through every show she’s ever done, the Heirs to My Dominion in the seats next to me. Of all the things that can warp a kid’s mind... watching his mom destroy herself with booze, pills, gambling, whatever... nothing is as harmful as sitting there helplessly while she macks on Capt. Von Trapp as a roomful of strangers applauds. And nothing will test the strength of a marriage quite like seeing your beloved in a nun costume.
(True story: The first time I saw her dressed as a nun I said “Hey, bring that costume home. I’d like to get into the habit” which admittedly is a gawdawful joke. And she said “If you want I’ll get a ruler and hit you with it.” To which I replied “No thanks. The last thing I need in our bedroom is a ruler.” Besides, if we ever do take a stab at sexual role playing, a nun will be the last one I’d ever pick. I’d much prefer a grey hoodie. And I’m not particular which one of us wears it.)
Since then there have been dozens of shows, one right after another. And like all true addicts, she’s surrounded herself with other addicts. Our whole social life now is hanging out with show people while they do show people stuff. They do shows. Talk about shows. They talk about where they’re getting their next show fix from. They see each other’s shows. They throw parties where they watch the DVD of the show they just did.
They’re nice people, but it’s hard for me to relate to them because I’m not a part of that world. I’m prevented from ever doing anything musical or dramatic by a lack of talent and common decency. Which is too bad, because I envy the people who can. They’re having fun the rest of us just can’t relate to. When I was in school, Drama Club was socially unacceptable so we tooled on those kids, but the joke was on us. While we were sitting around after school trying to find a buyer and arguing about Jim Rice, the Drama kids were hanging out with hot girls and helping them with costumes changes.
Ignorance toward musicals runs in my family. It’s a Dorchester/Weymouth thing. The first time my brother went to see one of my wife’s shows, he almost came to blows with the old guy sitting behind him like they were two 20-somethings jostling for position on the lawn at the Tweeter Center. It was Dot meets Cohasset over Rogers & Hammerstein and the results were predictably not pretty. So I find myself a non-show person walking through this strange, eclectic little subculture of show obsessed people. I’m the sober guy at the cocktail party.
But I do so without complaint. Because I’ve seen what being on stage does for these people. I’ve seen folks who by day are teachers, lawyers, contractors, housewives... and by night get to be Broadway freaking stars. I’ve watched my own Comely Lass be approached by moms whose little girls want to get their picture taken with her like she’s Minnie Mouse. And what kind of a husband wouldn’t want that for his wife? What kind of a tool do you have to be to prefer a wife who’s sitting at home every night talking about laundry and homework when she could be out doing... I don’t know... something interesting? Like Norman Dale says to Myra Fleener, “Most people would kill... to be treated like a god, just for a few moments.” So AnotherOpening, AnotherShow, since I’m uniquely qualified to answer your letter, my advice would be to suck it up and get a life. Or experiment with thespianism.