Marriage, the Chicago way

Athol has some advice for this husband, who seems to be going about handling a problematic situation more or less the right way.:

My wife’s queen bee friend talked a bunch of single and married friends into a five day trip flying to a major city. I expressed my extreme displeasure with this since they are doing tons of stuff I would love to do there with her.

I have decided to treat this as a shit test and am agreeing and amplifying now that I have failed to talk her out of it (they scheduled it pretty quickly without much more than a couple of mentions). I told her I am great now with separate vacations (very enthusiastic). I have also talked with the other husbands and we are planning a similar trip like a Caribbean trip. Her first hearing of this left her scrambling for reasons for me not to go. She even backed off of doing other girls birthday trips where earlier she had alluded.

First of all, there would appear to be problems in the marriage that the big trip is bringing out of the woodwork, not only with the reader's marriage, but some of the others as well. However, one mistake was made. So long as the husbands are planning a rival trip, it shouldn't have been to the Caribbean, but to Thailand. Just to, you know, see those fascinating ancient temples and all.

Ness: I want to get Capone! I don't know how to do it.

Malone: You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way!

If a group of wives are determined to go on such a "get our groove back" trip over their husbands' objections, at least one of those marriages is very likely on the downhill slide. The problem isn't necessarily the trip per se, but rather, the disrespect and lack of consideration involved.

The destination matters too. If it's the Caribbean, you might as well sell the house and have the papers waiting for her when she gets back. Countries with beaches and impoverished Africans are the middle-aged female equivalent of Bangkok and the Philippines; a survey of female tourists to three Dominican resorts found that one-third of them admitted to having had sex with the locals.

However, it's important not to judge women for doing this, since they're not doing it for sexual reasons, but because they are economic philanthropists.

All the respondents said they did not pay for the sexual services that men provided during their vacations at resorts. But many of the women explained that they paid money for sex as they treated it as economic aid to the resort staff or even the local economy.

Note that even when a woman is paying for prostitutes, the hamster spinneth.