My husband was drinking heavily away from home every night, hardly speaking to me and I believe he was seeing other women. He told me that I might as well leave because he didn‘t need me. One night he locked me out of the house and told me to come by in the morning for my clothes. When I did he had my bag packed, met me at the door and told me he would think about letting me see our six–year-old daughter sometime.

Later that day he called me from work and said he wanted me to talk to someone. Then he put some girl on the phone. This kind of thing went on until I became desperate. I was ready to leave him until someone told me about Fascinating Womanhood. I thought they were crazy. No book would change my husband, I was sure.

After some more suffering I sat down and read it and when I did I got so excited. I started the very next day and within weeks there was a dramatic change within him and in our marriage. He started staying home, taking me out, buying me things and his drinking almost completely stopped. But the most important change was he started talking to me again, sharing things with me. We even went walking in the snow one day with his arm around me. I could go on and on but the thing I would like to mention is this: He told me that I was suddenly a different person, that something had happened to me to change me. Our little girl is a different person now too. She had become so withdrawn and nervous that I suspected she had an ulcer. Now she is happy and outgoing and her father spends time with her.

The Pride of the Marines

Hi! I’m probably one of the youngest of the Fascinating Womanhood fans, being only 18. My marriage to Mark had everything going against it at the very beginning. We were both only 17 and our up bringings were so different. Mark had 6 months of high school to finish in California and I had 2 months to finish in Ohio where I am from. So we had eight weeks of separation to face after less than one week of marriage. After I graduated I went out to California to live with Mark and his parents.

I love my husband’s parents but they are so different from mine. My father is a minister while Mark’s father was a one-time heavy drinker. The difference between mothers is phenomenal, although I am very close to my mother-in-law. The odds were against our marriage making it until our baby was born. We were stubborn and determined to make it but were forced to go on welfare.

My husband is a very proud man, but for my sake and that of our unborn son, he swallowed his pride to accept welfare. He swore he would stop taking charity at the earliest possible moment, so he signed up for the Marine Corps, to leave in four days after he graduated. I have hated the Marine Corps since I was 8 years old. Every chance I had I said something demeaning about it. What this did to my husband’s pride I shudder to think.

After our son’s birth we were both closer and further away. He was proud of his son but there was still his unhappy wife who hated the Marine Corps. He wanted to please me but this was something he had to do. He had to prove he could make it in the toughest boot camp the services boasted. When I think of how close I came to talking him out of what he had so badly wanted to do I could cry.

My mother had given me Fascinating Womanhood a few days after I was married. I had read a few chapters and then forgotten it. How I wish I had taken the time to read it through. Shortly after our baby was born things began to go wrong. I began to have clashes with my father-in-law. The “biggie” came the day Mark left for boot camp. It started with something stupid and ended with him telling me that when I went to visit my mother I should just stay. It was two days until my plane left so I went to live with my sister-in-law.

When I came home I read Fascinating Womanhood all the way through. When I came to the part about building a man’s pride I knew that all these months I had been tearing him down. My mother impressed on me the importance of leaving a man his personal pride and even building it. A man has nothing if he has no pride.

I wrote Mark and told him I had a change of heart and didn’t hate the Marines. Before he got my letter I had one from him, telling me how much the Marine Corps had done for him. “You may not see the same person when I get back,” he wrote. ”I’ve learned a lot of things to change me. I feel it is for the better. Before I had very little pride in myself. When our son grows up I can tell him I am part of one of the worlds greatest, most elite and downright best forces in the world. Please write and tell me you believe in what I am doing, but only if you mean it.” When I wrote and told him I did believe in what he was doing and meant every word of it, he wrote back sounding like the world’s happiest man, and said, “Anything you want in the world is yours.”