Hallo everybody

She has to earn her keep. She isn’t there because she’s loved or adored or trusted or needed. She’s earning it.

That’s heartbreaking.

It’s a mark of their lack of empathy for one another that they cannot get the hint when the other needs support. This is a big part of marriage – sensing what the other needs, and providing it without judgment or qualification.

For some couples this can be hard to do as the years go on, especially if one party feels the other will not be there for them when the tables are turned. This seems to be Betty and Don’s problem (one of them, anyway) … I don’t think either of them have given the other much in the way of unqualified support, or reason to think it will be there for them if/when the time comes that they need to open up.

Certainly women in 1960 felt freer to open up than men did, but D&B seem an extreme case. Betty hardly knows anything about Don’s past (we know why, she doesn’t), and I personally don’t think Don cares too much about what makes Betty tick. So long as she looks the part he hired, er – married her for. For the most part, she’s willing to be the porcelain doll, but is realizing that’s a double-edged sword.

It’s only been 9 months that we’ve had this peek into their marriage, so what we don’t know greatly outweighs what we do.

But consider that Betty has been dealing with her own mortality and identity issues for the past 3+ months without much support from Don, who cannot tolerate her mourning too openly. Even the therapist Betty sees does not say much to her in the way of comfort and it’s not clear how much Betty really divulges to Francine about her mourning besides talking about how beautiful her mother was. Betty is quite out there on her own, questioning all the things she has built her life on. Add to the mix that now, her father, not even a full year after her mother’s death, is taking up with a woman who is so clearly not perfect.

Betty has modeled her wife/mother/woman identity upon her mother, who taught her to “hide the brushstrokes” and now it seems to her that her father is abandoning that ideal womanhood–it has to freak out Betty about her own identity and whether her father’s love for her is lasting. Betty’s hands started freezing up whenever confronted with the symbols of being left–Helen Bishop, Don not coming back to the birthday party with the cake. So the fear of being left by Dad is very real for Daddy’s little girl.

Betty hides all her issues behind trivialities. Ketchup on pot roast–read: What is it all for? What meaning does my life have? How do I hang on?

As for her inability to be present for Don in the midst of his mortality crisis–both of them seem rather self-absorbed and in their own worlds. They are talking at cross-purposes with each other, no one is getting anyone. That is terribly human and terribly reminiscent of relationships we’ve been in and couples we’ve known.

And he cheats because he was so utterly unloved that no amount of love or intimacy is ever enough.

This doesn’t excuse him, but I do believe his cheating comes from longing, not from being a slut.

Not holding his hand over Roger does not give him permission to cheat. If it did, Betty should have boffed the air conditioner guy since she can’t get any assistance from her husband in mourning the loss of her mother.

Friend with heart attack and wife wants to talk about pot roast or dead mother and spouse’s emotional disconnect and own mommy issues makes him no help. I know which one seems a more glaring reason to seek support from someone else.

Don wanted Rachel. If it wasn’t this incident, it would have been something else — anything else. Nothing else, but willingness on her part.

Sometimes a roast is not just a roast. Sometimes a roast is a way of saying, “Hey, I miss my mother, and there’s nobody to tell that to, and my father is boffing a woman I don’t like.” If Betty is supposed to sense that Roger’s heart attack is a big deal then he should have just as easily decoded her message.

Perhaps if Don would have said, “It could be me. Some day I might punch the clock in the arms of someone who’s perfume you’ll recognize,” she would have paid closer attention. As much as he likes Roger, some of his concern had to be, “there but for the Grace of God.”

Don and Betty don’t have a good marriage, but most marriages have moments of neglect or disconnect. In a better marriage, you communicate — “that hurt me,” or “this is important.” Neither one of these people knows how to do that, but only one of them uses that as a reason to cheat.

I like Don. His cheating doesn’t change that, but I don’t believe he is at all *justified.* If the excuse is the not-too-unique “my wife doesn’t understand me,” my response is that a good start would be to tell her who you are. You can’t understand someone you don’t know, and while he doesn’t know Betty that well, he certainly has a lot more clues as to who she is. Beyond having access to her family, and her willingness to discuss her past, he also talks to her therapist.

Oh, yes. Been there, done that. Oops, but we weren’t talking about me… Such a great description, though…

We know that buried deep inside Betty is a freak (as in sexual beast) of major proportions. I wonder if she ever feels comfortable–or even reckless–enough with Don to ever let that out? Those times when they’re having sex, and it’s clearly “what she wants” as she told the psychiatrist, does she ever just yell out, “oh, yes, big daddy, bring it on home!” Or whatever the 1960 equivalent was. Because if he is a stevedore in bed (gawd, I want one of those!) how could she not respond? Is she really that afraid of him–of what he’ll think or do?

Believe me, I’m not excusing Don’s bad behavior. But I do like Betty when she asserts her feelings, which we know she’s done. I’d like to see her do it more ofen. I bet Don would treat her better if she bitched it up a little, occasionally calling him on his sh*t the way Midge and Rachel always do.