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We have a young friend who married  a guy and the whole situation sounds identical . She was a quiet girl and had never dated before meeting him.   He was in jail on drug charges before they got married.  His mother and father keep bailing him out of his messes with drug dealers and buying him toys like lawn mowers, tractors, trucks, etc. to help him fulfill his many grandiose plans.    He's a very "charming" guy when he wants to be, but is totally self-absorbed.  In nine years he's had about 30 different jobs for a few weeks at a time.  Wanted her to work two jobs to pay the bills, and also support his drug habit.  Many times, he's told her to bring their child with her in the middle of the night, to come pick him up in a nearby city, because he's had to leave his truck as collateral for the drugs he bought.  He left about a year ago to move in with a girlfriend and took all the bedroom furniture, leaving our niece and their 2 year old son having to sleep on the davenport., and also leaving her with the bills.    Her mother is in poor health, but is working 50 hours a week to help her daughter.  She  is now paying off the mortgage on the house, as he had it put in her name.  She's also paying for child care for the little boy.  Our young friend is a fool for staying with him, and now that the girlfriend has moved out, they're getting back together.  "I can't help it, I love the guy"  is her response.  This guy is a sociopath and our niece is a fool. 

  Don't know how anyone could wake up Jessica before this wedding happens, but hope they can.  There are nice guys out there who are looking for nice girls.   Tell her to ditch this jerk and try again.

Please tell the couple who are trying so hard to have a baby they need to relax, quit thinking about getting pregnant, and enjoy themselves.

When we were first married 48 years ago, we wanted to have children right away and since it didn't happen immediately, we began to stress about it and do whatever the medical community knew to do back in those days.  It did indeed sort of become a job.  We lived on a farm.  One of the ewes had twin lambs and wouldn't "own" one.  I began feeding it with a bottle, which had to be done on a regular schedule day and night.  Getting pregnant kind of went to the bottom of the list, as this sweet fluffy little orphan was depending on me for it's life.     The lamb gradually began to thrive and one morning as I was bending over to feed it, I noticed I was very nauseated.   This continued to get worse and lo and behold I found out I was pregnant.  My husband thinks feeding the lamb brought  out my maternal instinct.  I think just forgetting about trying so hard was what did the trick.  PS  The lamb lived on to have lambs of it's own.

Our marriage started off with all the bad luck anyone could imagine.  

We had purchased a trailer home and while the service man was installing and filling the fuel tank outside the house, it fell off the holder on his leg.  Fortunately he wasn't badly injured. 

We also had difficulty getting a final location for the electric pole to be set and still had no electricity when we returned from our honeymoon. 

The Wednesday before our wedding, the Florist shop burned to the ground.  The florist insisted on providing the flowers anyway, and I was losing petals from my bouquet all the way down the aisle. 

The church had been in a remodeling mode for some months before the wedding, but the pastor assured us that everything would be in place so we could have a modest reception in the church basement.  A couple days before the wedding when we went in to decorate, we found that we would have to move a couple of pianos up or down stairs, as well as many, many tables and chairs, etc..  We had to move the reception to the upstairs of the local fire hall.  

The morning of the wedding, my future husband's gear shift broke off his car and he had to spend the whole morning trying to get it repaired. 

The photographer's camera broke at some point and he told us a week later that none of our group pictures turned out. 

When we returned from our two day honeymoon, we had to overnight at his parent's house due to there being no electricity yet at our home.  His mother had put grocery bags between the open box springs and the mattress to protect the mattress.  Needless to say, just rolling over in bed caused a great deal of crackling. 

In spite of this bad start, we have a very wonderful and happy marriage and will be celebrating our 49th anniversary in November.    The best thing you can do about adversity is laugh at it and hug your spouse.

When I was in 2nd grade, I had a new teacher named Miss Seeley. I was a fairly shy and quiet little kid.  One day a girl wore a bracelet to school and it turned up missing.  Miss Seeley made us all stay after school till it was found.  This was a new experience and many were crying.  I saw the bracelet under the owner's desk in the back of the room.  Excitedly told the teacher thinking she'd be pleased, and she said: "I should have known it was you who took it".  I was devastated.  I am now 68 and was relating this story during a gathering of old classmates. Tears began pouring down one girl's face.  "I thought she hated me" she said.  This girl had gone out at lunch time and almost been hit by a car.  She came back to the room crying and scared, and Miss Seeley not only wouldn't comfort her, but wouldn't let any of the other students comfort her.  Another girl had transferred into the school from elsewhere and Miss Seeley made her sit at a desk out in the hall.  She also thought she was hated.   This info came out from just a small group of us.  We'll never know how many others thought she hated them too.  At one point after graduation, I worked in the office at the same school and was able to look at my grade school records.. All my marks were in the 90's except for that 2nd grade year when my marks were all in red and failing.  Not sure what happened to Miss Seeley, but hopefully she gave up the teaching profession before she scarred anymore little kids.