PATRICK writes:

Attached is an article in which the author recounts her decision to terminate her marriage.

It is so familiar, so tired.  It is narcissistic and at points even solipsistic.  There is no thought given to duty or morality.   She infrequently refers to her husband’s feelings, and such references seem hollow.  I think her and her fellow travelers simply live in a separate moral universe than traditionalists – and I despair.Marriage has been redefined as:  “I will remain with you as long as I feel like it, but if I start to feel empty and unsatisfied, I will terminate this relationship.”  Maybe these words should be formally incorporated into modern secular wedding vows.   

 I enjoy your work and appreciate your website.  Thank you.

Laura writes:

Notice the author, Tasha Cotter, wrote this a mere six months after informing her husband that she no longer had any tender feelings in her lifeless heart for him.

                                                                              — Comments —

Fred Owens writes:

I don’t know where I read this, but I know it’s true — that despair is the greatest of sins.

Patrick writes, “I think her and her fellow travelers simply live in a separate moral universe than traditionalists – and I despair.”

But I’m going to say this was momentary on his part, or a bit of dramatic expression. I feel despair at times. I fight it. There are genuine feelings of loss, grief, sorrow, and melancholy. Bad things happen to good people and generate these genuine feelings.

But despair — never! It’s from the devil.

Laura writes:

I agree, and I also assume Patrick was being dramatic.

Despair is immoral. 

Kidist Paulos Asrat writes:

This woman you write about perhaps shows the worst of our feminized/feminist culture. Her husband is weeping next to her during her (possibly predictable) announcement. I didn’t feel any sympathy for him, and I often side with men who finally break down emotionally, like he’s done, since they rarely do so.

Don’t you think he enabled her? Liberal men can be really callous. I wonder if they are even capable of loving their wives and children, but rather see them as pawns to further their own goals and ambitions: of acquiring more material goods (via the wife’s “career”), restructuring society (via equality and non-discrimination), eliminating God (and God’s hierarchies). They act like gods themselves (although they would forever deny this), and are thunderstruck when their own “creatures” turn against them, like Frankenstein.

Maybe I’m the callous one. But, I have lost a good deal of time and clear thinking sympathizing (and siding) with them – it is interesting to see how they can also milk one’s emotions when other methods fail. Don’t get me wrong, the women are far from innocent. Like Eve, they are also after destruction. But, Adam, who had the ability to stop Eve, never did. Just like modern liberal (and liberalized -which also means “conservative”) men.

Laura writes:

It’s hard to tell what he was like, but clearly she held him in contempt. His reaction to her news was strange, as if he had never heard of the many thousands of rebellious women who have left their husbands because they can’t feel a high. He apparently was sheltered.

He cries when he should have showed her the door; told her to get out of his car and walk home or said, “That’s great news! I am in love with someone else.” He was a doormat. If he had angrily accused her of betrayal, it wouldn’t have made for such a pat essay. 

However, whatever he did or did not do, he didn’t deserve to be treated this way by his wife. She was a callous traitor, even more so since she publicly humiliated him with this piece.

Elizabeth Gilbert created a new literary subgenre for narcissistic women writers who dump their loyal spouses.

Lawrence Auster:

Tasha Cotter is a monster. 

I don’t care to explain my reasons for saying that. It’s not necessary. 

She is a monster, period.

Laura writes:

The commenters who cheered her on and praised her writing are monsters too. Every last one of them.

No matter how lyrical it may be – and Tasha Cotter’s piece was not lyrical, but contained awkward analogies – prose that describes real-life betrayal and cruelty, humiliating actual people with no remorse or regret, is a form of vandalism.

 Mr. Auster writes:

The precious analogies and metaphors that fill her article are central to her monstrousness. She turns her every passing sterile thought and self-obsession into some metaphor that makes it seem big and meaningful, but there is nothing meaningful. There is only this small self-obsessed person who imagines that her every passing thought and feeling is extremely important. 

At some other time, when I have the desire to do so, I could demonstrate in detail what is monstrous about her article. But I don’t know that such an analysis could convey the truth of the matter better than the sentence, “She’s a monster.”

Laura writes:

She did this to her husband after returning from a “writer’s conference.” She may have been encouraged to think that it doesn’t matter what story you make as long as you make a story.

Mr. Auster adds:

Also, I thought the longish colloquy at your site about the putative wimpiness of the husband was off point and distracted from the main point, which is her monstrousness. When I read the article, it didn’t leap out at me that the husband was weak, wimpy, etc. In the article, he and and his reactions are only seen very indirectly, through the filter of her self-obsession and her writing technique which embodies her self-obsession.                 

Laura writes:

That is a fair point.  As I said, whatever he did, she was a callous traitor.      

I also think it was normal  for him to cry.  What are men supposed to do, so steel themselves against women like this that they anticipate betrayal at any moment?

What she did is one thing. It was vicious. But the public acceptance and glorification of it is another. A woman such as this should be shunned, not praised at a literary website. It is one more horrifying example of the re-definition of femininity. Women no longer see themselves as lovers and nurturers. They actively despise and glorify the naked assertion of self. 

Brett writes:

To Tasha Cotter: This is written like everything else I read in the literary journals: lots of hand-waving emotion and NPR-styled “vivid” use of adjectives, but a complete loss of insight into the issue.

Let me rephrase it for you. A person who doesn’t know how to make a decision compounds the error by making the decision a second time with as little faith, introspection and critical thinking as the first time.

You probably think you are a martyr, sacrificed on the altar of some  standard you cannot live up to, but in reality, you are part of the 90%  of humanity who do nothing but waste others’ time.

Note to Laura Wood: The style in which Tasha Cotter writes is the trending style in literary journals and has been for a decade, despite the fact that it sells no books. Notice how much of its “voice” is borrowed from NPR, right down to the pacing. When liberal academia (notably: MFA programs) swallowed up creative writing, they replaced all truthfulness with a tendency toward “artistic” personal drama that is 100% disconnected from what a real audience wants. Other MFAs love it, which is why they all buy each others’ journals; notice how there are roughly 500-1000 journals and they each do print runs of 1000. :-)

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