I’m paralyzed by fear my choices won’t match needs of future wife

By David McElroy · January 16, 2022

I’ve been treading water in my life — not sure which way to go — for roughly a decade.

If you’ve read what I’ve said lately, you know that I’m ready to finally change that. In some audio last week, I explained why I have to stop trying to be what other people might want me to be. A few days ago, I shared with you the specifics of a couple of short films I’m working on, even though they scare me.

But I’m still paralyzed by fear of taking steps that could close off certain choices forever. There are a dozen doors through which I could go right now. Probably many more than that. But choosing one of those doors will close some of the other doors forever.

I’m afraid of making the wrong choices. I’m afraid of choosing a path that will take me somewhere that doesn’t match the needs of whoever I might marry in the future. What if my choice takes me away from someone I love?

I feel as though I have only one more chance to get things right insofar as having a wife and family. I don’t want to blow my chance.

I might not feel this so strongly if I hadn’t been married and divorced years ago. Even though she and I had a very “friendly” divorce — which I rarely talk about — the experience left me afraid to make the same mistake again.

That’s part of the reason I’ve been engaged twice since then and backed out both times. One of those would have definitely been a mistake. I’ll never know about the other one. In each case, though, I was petrified about making a mistaken choice a second time.

(And this isn’t the time or place to get into the far broader issues of how you can ever be sure — and what you really ought to do if you’ve married the wrong person.)

One of the reasons I’ve been so afraid to make big decisions over the last decade is that I’ve wanted to know who I’d marry. I’ve wanted to live a life that would make her happy and make her proud of me. Although I have some things I definitely want, I know that every successful marriage is a blending of the goals and needs of two people.

Without knowing who she would be, I’ve been afraid to make big decisions that might limit my future choices. So I’ve waited. And I’ve wasted a lot of time.

One of the big decisions I need to make right now is where I’m going to live. Because I expect social and economic collapse in this country, my instinct is to get out. If I decide for myself alone, that’s exactly what I’ll do.

I’ve considered places in Ecuador, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Guyana and Georgia, among others. (That’s Georgia the country, not Georgia the U.S. state.) Somewhere away from the collapsing U.S. society will offer some safety that will be hard to find here in the bleak years to come.

There are tradeoffs involved with all of them — and making those tradeoffs seems impossible without knowing who’s going to be with me as I build a new life there. And on top of that, there’s the more basic issue. Will I end up with someone who has absolutely definite reasons that she must stay in the U.S.?

That’s just an example. Should I choose to live somewhere that’s fairly urban? More rural? Or what? I can make choices for myself, but not for someone who’s not with me yet.

One of the reasons it’s taken me so long to accept that I don’t have any choice but to move forward with a creative path is that I’ve been afraid of wanting to marry someone who couldn’t accept that uncertain path. I thought I would have been willing to choose occupations that could be more financially stable and provide higher income — if that’s what she needed.

I’ve finally made the painful (and scary) decision that I must follow my creative needs, and what that means is that I can’t marry someone if she’s not willing to accept a husband who’s a writer/filmmaker/thinker/weirdo who’s trying to change minds and hearts more than trying to build a safe bank account.

If I knew who my future wife was going to be, I would be willing to make decisions that took her into account. But since I don’t know who she’s going to be, I’m fearful that whatever I decide will preclude a love that I really need.

I know I shouldn’t allow this, but it’s where I am. I’m paralyzed by the fear of losing what I need the most by making a decision that leads away from where I should be and who I should be with. (Whatever that is and whoever she is.)

I have to decide something. I know that I must move forward soon. I can’t spend another decade treading water and hoping to know the right choices. I’m going to have to choose a door — and accept that any door I choose might close half a dozen other doors.

I know I have to make some choices. Very soon. But I’m afraid of losing out on what I really need most. I haven’t yet figured out how to resolve this paralysis, but the time is coming when I must choose — and close off the other doors forever.

Share on Social Networks

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

Related Posts