. . . and then there was pickle.

The first six months I knew my wife she was a logical, sane, stable human being. I considered this a positive and one of the most refreshing aspects about her. I had had many relationships and was fairly certain that there was no such thing as a chemically balanced female.

Law School changed all that, and since about her second semester I have heard repeatedly, “I know I’m not making much sense right now, but as soon as we get through . . . (fill in any sequence of events since) . . . I’ll be better.

I no longer believe that she is going to “get back to normal”, as time has shown me – I am starting to believe that this state is ‘the norm.’

Much like men will open doors and provide oral sex (without encouragement) during the courting phase, I now see that women will act as if they have some control over their emotions and general judgment to catch their man, and then bam like a rug out from under ya in a bad vaudevillian skit - she’s crying because . . .(fill in personal experience here)

This is not to say that some women are not stable – I’ve seen them on TV. They are usually the ones that play the ‘best friend’ of the guy that’s chasing the ‘popular beauty’ and then in the moment of direst crisis realizes that he’s been chasing the wrong girl . . . I thought I married the best friend.

Uh huh. . .

And they just keep raising the stakes – not unjustified, don’t get me wrong. My wife has every reason to be crazy:

1. She’s married to me.
2. She hates her job.
3. She just had a baby.
4. She can’t be with the baby.
5. Her mother is crazy.
6. I’m crazy.
7. She’s a woman.

Any one of those things alone could push somebody over the edge, but she’s got all of them to deal with at once.

The thing is, I have become so numb to her erratic behavior - that I don’t know what I should be feeling anymore . . . or, if I should just ignore her completely; however, I saw how well that worked for my father - and he didn’t get laid for 15 years.

The truth is that I know I should be feeling a great deal of sympathy for The Wife. She is in a fairly bad emotional place right now without any real relief in sight (Hilton Head, JULY!!). She didn’t have the birth she wanted. She was traumatized, and four weeks later she had to go back to work.

The problem is that what ends up happening is I walk around on egg-shells, being made to feel guilty about the fact that I am the one at home with the baby - trying to hold together my insecurities along with her emotional collapse.

Being a stay-at-home-dad and a full-time graduate student is not an easy task, yet I am constantly made to feel that I am not allowed to whisper a word of complaint - without the offer of a trade being made in a second.

The entire process has made me aware of the double standard in sexual stereotypes. If I were the one that had to go back to work, as most fathers do, I would be crushed to have to leave The Pickle every day. Yet, I know that the sympathy that would be allotted to me at the workplace and in the home would be nothing compared to what The Wife gets and expects on a daily basis.

It makes me bitter and resentful for all the dads that have to go to work every morning as though that were natural either. Separation is painful no matter who you are.

The problem is that it’s driving The Mom loopy, and slowly pushing a wedge between us. We are currently both looking at each other in our ivory towers . . . waiting for the other to climb up and tell us how amazing we are - while looking at the green grass on the other side of the fence.

My true jealousy stems from the fact that she had the foresight to establish the whole ‘crazy wife’ thing ahead of time. Which puts me in a position of weakness. So when one of us decides to compromise, I am going to have to tell her how amazing what she is doing is – mainly cuz it’s true.

Pickle’s Papa