I Get Mail

This month marks the 100th page and second anniversary of And They Lived Happily Ever After, which began as a simple forum for what I considered to be unique but objective truths about a most maligned and misunderstood institution - marriage. During the past two years, the amount of emails I've received from visitors around the world has both surprised and delighted me, and to mark my second year online I've decided to reproduce some of the most memorable emails - good and bad - that have come in from visitors who found inspiration enough to type out their comments and send them my way.

KUDOS

I wish I could comment separately on each of the following emails, but I find the words lacking. I responded to each and every person who wrote in, thanking them for their kind words and encouragement, but I doubt if these people will ever really know how much their support means to me. I am delighted that there are so many positive, pro-value people out there who want lifetime romance and a happy marriage, and I'm honoured that they have found the time to listen to what I have to say. Here are some of the most touching and inspiring emails from fans and friends:

Leanne - You are my hero. Upon discovering your website (just today) and reading this chapter, I now have a mentor. Yours is the philosophy and attitude I aspire to. I am 54 and eloped with the love of my life 2 weeks ago after 3+ years of attempting to become comfortable with his love of female beauty. His attitude is very much like Dwayne's (I found his website recently also.) I find this attitude very threatening. But I am also finding it to be a wonderful opportunity to grow. I must and I am. I look forward to reading more of your thoughts. S.M

I have so enjoyed reading your articles. Your insight is refreshing. I was helped so much by them. I found myself both affirmed and reproved. I intend to relay this site to every soul I know. Thank You! A

I have recently discovered your website and I have to say your insight on relationships has really inspired me and has given me a great understanding of how I feel as a man, husband, father & lover. I feel like I have found the oracle in making my marriage a success and making both my and my spouse's lives together more fulfilling. Thank you. B.H.

I love your diction and forthrightness. I only discovered your site and am greedily absorbing your comments. K.

What a insightful website! I am impressed. It was a pleasure to read about your wisdom on the subject of marriage. G.

I came across your site when doing a search for some information related to an article I'm working on. The article centers around adultery and the effects it has on the cheated spouse. I am currently working with at least two psychologists on this, but I find that I disagree with them, and agree with YOU. I'm tired of well-written, well-researched, yet biased articles spouting off the drivel pounded into Americans' heads by well-meaning experts. They foster this "excusable offense" mindset we as a society seem to have, and I want to put a different view out there. D.B.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!! I found your site by sheer luck... and entered into heaven! Finally... A human who has the words I've wanted to say. You must be some great person. Well this so called 40 year old African American is impressed...Thank you for your site... keep up the good work. W.H.

I have stumbled upon your website, andtheylivedhappilyeverafter.com, and have found it very enjoyable. It's nice to see clearheaded opinions and advice on the subjects within. Keep it up, it is comforting to know there are still others that share these views. D.B

Absolutely Bloody Brilliant! Did one person write all that? Who wrote that? Leanne Bell??? If we could turn back the clock and put you in place of Germaine Greer, the divorce rate would be a fraction of what it is today. You sure as hell know what you are talking about! What is wrong with society in general today???? Why is it that there are so few that don't already know how to make their marriage work or achieve happiness within that marriage??? Congratulations for a brilliant and correct view of marriage and how it should be and how to make it that way! Not to mention religion and all the other issues where I think you are spot on in your objective opinion! I just hope that people out there take heed of your advice/opinion. They will certainly be much happier and psychologically healthier people if they do! Unbelievable !!!! N.H.

What a phenomenal website! Absolutely wonderful! I'm blown away that I'm not the only one who believes in women's rights but not militant feminism, who believes in the happiness of a feminine woman submitting to a masculine man, in the beautiful potential of happy marriage...this site stands as a lasting testimony to the fact that not all women have lost their minds. I especially enjoyed the piece on Madonna and her husband. Thank you!

I have just read your article on adultery and wanted to congratulate you for such a clear discourse on this subject.After reading your article, these things became amazingly clear in my mind - she is an adulteress and our "marriage" as it was, is now over! Thank you so much once again for providing such excellent clarity on such a common problem. With best wishes. C

What a wonderful web site; just stumbled across it this morning.Good well thought out commentary! P.

Are you real? This stuff is unbelievable. I would love for my wife to read it, but can't imagine sending her a link or snippet. Your comments on how men would love to start the day are so incredibly spot on. D.B.

The Green-eyed Monster series hit home hard. I had been doing the usual keyword search on jealousy and stumbled across your site. I found so much validity to my feelings that I could not believe it.Thank you for this site, and please continue. M.F.

The greatest number of positive emails came in about my piece The Good Husband's Guide, where I turned the tables on the militant feminists who used a 1950's guide for good wives as a way to vilify men:

Hello- I want you to know that I received the Housekeeping Monthly from May 13th, 1955. It is amazing how much things have changed. However, I do agree with you. The amount of pressure and the ridiculous expectations we now have of men, well, what can I say it looks like the pendulum swings both ways. I did however forward the article that you wrote. I think that men bashing has gone too far. Wouldn't it be nice if we could reach a happy medium? Somewhere in the middle would be nice. Just wanted to share my thoughts. Thanks for sharing your article. M N

How wonderful your article was. It is about time the men of our partnerships get the credit they are due. I agree that too many feminists just find everyway they can to bash men.

I don't know who you are, I don't know what you normally write about or anything else, but I found your logic, your argument, and especially your example very impressive. A creative idea. Well written. I'm not someone who can speak for these sorts of things. I'm not a writer and I'm not a critic. but I was very impressed with what I read, and I thought you might like to hear that. thanks. G.U.

Kudos to you for this well-written and comprehensive piece!You have said everything I believe in and cannot get through to certain people. Thank you so much for writing such an enlightened and forward-thinking article! I am enjoying your site immensely. J.

DARTS

Of course, not everyone agrees with what I have to say. They are not as numerous as those who think about what I have to say and comment positively (or at least politely) but they are definitely good for a laugh. I have determined that those who are most opposed to my views are those who either have some deviant behaviour they're trying to justify, or else simply have a seething hatred of mankind, and therefore themselves, in general. Here are some of the "best" of these kind, in that the words they use, their arguments and their general attitude, do more to prove my point than I ever could. I comment on them because their method of communicating is almost always vulgar, insulting, often misspelled and grammatically incorrect, and their ideology so flawed, so filled with animosity and wrong ideas, that I feel it my duty to reveal what the face of anti-value looks like, and how to knock down their arguments for anyone who happens to encounter someone like them.

I am curious as to where or how you came up with alot of that "info" or "opinion". First off, I found your idea of divorce ("People who divorce and remarry respect the institution of marriage and respect themselves. As difficult as divorce may be, as painful and unpleasant as it may be, it is necessary to preserve the essential beauty of marriage".) completely absurd. Marriage is a sacred thing. People with attitudes like yours is what is wrong with the world today. Nothing is sacred anymore. Sex and marriage are treated as casually and invaluble as going out for coffee. I am just glad that I was raised to know better. I just feel sorry for the people that do read your web page and build their beliefs on your ignorance. The basis of Marriage is not sex. I will admit that I didn't even bother reading the rest of your website cause I found it all to be too much. But from everything I did read, I thought it was absurd and I wanted to share my thoughts with you. P.A.

Ah yes, the old "I haven't read anything you have to say but I know you're wrong!" trick, the famous "I have no idea what you're talking about but you're wrong and I'm right!" argument. This is almost as good as this email, from a confused university student who wants to use my work in a rhetoric class because he thinks it supports his position:

I'm doing a research paper for an English rhetoric class. My topic is that there is no such thing as a happy marriage. It's my belief that happiness can not be measured. A person who is happy today, may not be tomorrow. Making decisions regarding your marriage on such feelings is a bad idea. To further my argument I would like to quote some of your material M.B.

As I pointed out to this young soul, it's absurd to say happiness cannot be measured because a person who is happy today may not be tomorrow - that's like saying whether a person is alive or not can't be measured because a person who is alive today may not be tomorrow. This illustrates the sorry state of our universities these days for encouraging this kind of ludicrous thinking. What's most disturbing, however, is that he somehow thinks And They Lived Happily Ever After supports his theory that there's no such thing as a happy marriage. I only hope this fellow doesn't go into medicine.

Feminists don't like me either, because I threaten the moral superiority they've built up over the years. I get a lot of angry emails from women who feel threatnened by my belief in using "Mrs" and taking a husband's last name:

Those that refer to themselves as "MRS" obviously have a lack of self-esteem because they can't be identified as their own person but rather as the property of someone else. Think about it...if men are always MR. regardless of marital status, why shouldn't women enjoy the same privilege? It's women who keep the title "MRS" who keep women in a lower place in society. That's what's so sad about the whole thing. It goes much deeper than a "title" it's about equality: in the workplace, the world, etc. It's about women getting the same pay for the same work, about not facing discrimination in everything they do, etc.

and

I should think that by marrying the man, you are conveying your love for him. To follow your logic, then I geuss the husband doesn't need to show his love to the woman as he isn't changing his name! You must not feel women are too worthy of love then?? Misogynistic traditions like this have no place in the 21st. century. I'm PROUD to keep my name & will never be demoted to the position of appendage - how embarrassing is that!!!

I love the name I was born with,the name of my Father ,whose blood I have in my veins. No are no blood links with the man you marry.... ONLY A PIECE OF PAPER

Imagine going through life with chips on your shoulder the size of these women's. Imagine being so freaked out and so defensive about your name - they're the ones who feel unworthy of love, who feel that "women have a lower place in society", and who view themselves as "property". I myself have no such hangups or problems, I enjoy my life and my marriage and would hate to spend my time filled with so much anger and bitterness and rage at the world. I wonder if that last woman's husband knows how little she thinks of him and their marriage.

This email came from a male feminist, that bizarre creature who has joined the women's movement, I suspect, because he thinks he'll get some.

I just wanted to tell you that upon reading your rant about a man proposing to the woman, and how its not in the relationships best interest.... I'm sure you know which one I'm refering to. Well, in light of reading this, I think you need to get your head checked out. What you described is called a traditional society. Ask any modern (under 30) female today and I'm sure she will tell you that she would prefer it, but she won't stress it if she has to ask him. I bet you prefer to sit at home, watch soap operas and then demand your man cook his own dinner (which would be - all together now - a modern outlook). While I feel that this world needs to accept women and men holding the same roles, all your doing is returning us to the 1930s. (By the way, I get home at 7am, so u better have breakfast on the table waiting) I strongly suggest you take a look at the real American society and wake up to what women of TODAY want. (Look an AARP card came for you...) Either catch up with the times, or leave them alone. Your opinions aren't shared with this generation. P.M

Uh, yes they are. Read the kudos section if you don't believe me.

What I find interesting about this guy is that for someone who claims to care about women so very much, he has no qualms about insulting a woman he's never even met. The men I know are gentlemen and would never be so rude to a lady. He also makes his contempt of older people quite clear, even though he has no idea how old I am and would likely be quite surprised to hear that I wasn't around for, say, the moon landing. People like this believe that anything we believe today has merit simply because we think it "today", and that any idea embraced in the past, whether valid or not, must be disregarded because previous generations believed it. The problem with thinking this is that it means in twenty years, everything he believes right now will have to be tossed out because of it's untimeliness. I personally couldn't base my life on such rickety foundations. I included this email so that rational people will have an answer for anyone who tries to tell them to "get with the times" and reject every good and wonderful thing about relationships.

And perhaps the worst of the lot - or the best of the worst - comes from the rare exceptions out there, the truly hateful and bitter men who make the rest of us laugh at their obvious sexual issues. I don't buy into the idea that misogyny is rampant or that men are vicious, but after having received these emails I admit that hatred and sexual dysfunction are definitely alive and well in the minds of some very stunted and immature men. For example, one man used an email to me to prove just how similar he is to the terrorists who struck America on September 11th:

You wrote "Women are just as capable, just as intelligent, and just as rational as men and can naturally perform any skill as well as men" Bullshit! Men are bigger and stronger than women and better at math and at analytical thinking and a host of other things. I didn't see any female "fire fighters" pulling people out of the World Trade Center, did you?

It takes a pretty black soul to use the valiant heroism of our September 11th heroes as a way of putting down women. It also takes a pretty ignorant one, who obviously ignored the contribution of the hundreds of women who worked just as hard at that site as their male counterparts did.

And then there was this fellow:

Boy, you sure are obsessed with Clinton getting his dick sucked by some insignifigant little ho. You act as if he was the only leader to get blown in the White House. And you act as if he cheated on you. Maybe you are shocked and horrified and humiliated because it was your own secret fantasy to swallow his chunk, .....secret masturbatory fantasies swirling abound in your naive brain. And when you found out the little sleaze-bag intern was slobbering on his meat, I mean, well!, we just can't have that, now, can we?

As I pointed out to this misguided soul, I wasn't the one surfing the internet at three in the morning (when this email arrived) looking for stories about Clinton's penis. And since I wrote one page about Clinton's lies, perjury, obstruction of justice and slap on the wrist, in which I used none of the vulgarity or seedy sexual insults that this guy used, I'd say he was the one who was jealous of Monica Lewinsky.

A lot of men take offense to my accurate and unapologetic opinion about mail order brides and the men who seek them. Emails like this one prove my point for me better than I ever could.

"I don't know what kind off fucking self stem you have to call the foreign girls, ignorant and opportunistic! The American woman are the ones that even ass ugly as ost of them are, they demand a BMW, Mercedes and million dollar home.(talk about ignorant, opportunistic and materialistic). This woman are more refined than you will ever understand in what's the remainder of your filthy life! They are educated with bachelors, masters and know more than one language and culture, wich is more than you'll ever experience in you bitter life. You are probably a MEN Hater, since you are probably fat and ugly and could never get the attention of a decent man. Aftewr reading your mail, I know undestand that you are full off hate, envy, and bitterness. But what can a simple person like you do agains the world?"

If I were to ever, even once, receive an intelligent, polite email from a man who wanted to debate the merits of seeking a wife oversears, I'd gladly listen to his point of view. But that's not likely to happen, judging from the seething hatred that the men like this guy are so eager to demonstrate.

Of all the mail I've gotten concering mail order brides, every single email from a mail order bride herself asked for my help in locating support groups and the names of lawyers that could help her press charges against an abusive husband or else get divorced as soon as possible, such as:

"Do you have any information regarding support and advocacy groups for mail order brides? (Websites, email addresses, etc). I am a victim of this game and I need a support as well as giving support to any action against this. Your help will be really appreciated. T.G."

and

..."He was abusive, a dual substance abuser and I think he has an anti-social personality disorder. But, he inherited a great deal of money. This allowed him to get away with so much abuse of me. He also has family connections in the court system where he lives. He has either married a Russian woman or is trying to. I feel so sorry for women who are coming to this country as mail order brides. They have no idea." A

And yet every email from a man who married such a woman is like this guy's. Based solely on the feedback from that page, I am more convinced than ever that mail order brides take their lives in their hands when they marry men like this guy, and I think we ought to take the parties' involved own words as proof of this fact.

But the best - or worst - and certainly the funniest came from these two idiots, who fall under the 'Why haven't you shot yourself yet?' category:

Either you live under a rock, or you actually believe some of the foolish dribble you spout on your website. I know/friends with 10 married men (myself included). I do know for a fact that four of them have had affairs. This is something that has been occurring since the dawn of man. You are so self diluted that you think "love" is actually real. We are all damned anyway, why fight it? This entire world is such a cesspool that it will take a giant rock from outer space to clean it up. I actually have a contest with one of my married friends. We go out and try to see who can score the most married women in a month - it's great fun. Three months ago (when we last played) I actually won. I banged three married women - one of them in her own bed at home with the kids in the next room sleeping! You see, that proves to me that even though men and women may appear different, we are all actually the same evil little bastards.

I usually don't even bother with people who try to appear intelligent but who tell me I'm "diluted" or that four out of ten constitutes a majority, but the obvious question that a guy like this begs is "If you're such a self-admitted "evil little bastard" then why should I or anyone else listen to your opinion?"

And as for this guy:

"You know, I'm glad that I somehow managed to stumble upon your website because it confirmed and intensified my hatred for people like you: White, western, arrogant, stuck-up, middle aged, middle class, and narrow-minded North American women...A smug sense of self-satisfaction and condescending superiority permeates every single sentence of every single paragraph you write. This is exemplified in the self-congratulatory messages you not-so-subtly throw out in your articles here and there: You brag about your husband, you brag about your "mind blowing" sex life, and you brag about how special your marriage is. Your arrogance is very familiar to me as I've been unfortunate enough to have had to submit to the likings of your kind since the day my family immigrated to Canada. From elementary school to high school to university to work, I've always had to subjugate my own status for that passing grade, for that scholarship or for that recommendation letter (that's right, you people hold the power positions in this society)...Your little diatribe, "I will love you always…", reveals more about the despicable nature of people like you than any words I can put forth.Let me let you in on something. When those two planes slammed into the twin towers of the WTC, I felt an immediate affinity for the terrorists' cause. I could personally relate to the hatred they internalized for American/Western selfishness, racism and indifference. As far as I'm concerned, 6333 dead Yankees are 6333 fewer capitalist snobs with 6333 fewer Chrysler minivans they WOULD be driving to 6333 fewer suburban bungalows."

Wow. What a sweetheart. I don't have to say anything else about him, he reveals his lack of character so completely that no further comment is even necessary.

Because of all the negativity of these past few messages I thought I'd like to end this page on a happier note, to restore my faith and yours in the goodness of people and their genuine desire for lifelong love and happy marriage. This last email illustrates this perfectly: it's by far the best email I've ever received, from the best and most wonderful man I've ever known, my adorable husband.

The woman who writes this site is as sexy as she is brilliant. She just may singlehandedly resurrect marriage as the highest cornerstone of all sexual and romantic happiness. Her knowledge is profound, her courage steady, and the gift she offers to any and all capable of reading is incalculable. She offers nothing less than to live happily ever after with the woman or man of our dreams. I know, because I'm living it with her, and I can tell you, she's the sweetest most intelligent woman I've ever known, and cute as a button to boot! D.B

Right back at ya, babe! Thanks, sweetie, I love you too!

So that's it, the culmination of two years, the very best and worst of the correspondents that have written to me. I have also provided advice and counselling, have answered legal questions and directed people to experts who can help where I can't, have talked teenagers out of marrying and commitment-phobes into taking the plunge, I have had spirited and enjoyable conversations with various people from around the world, have debated issues and shared in personal stories with those who have reached out to a new friend. It has been a thrilling experience. I'm always open for questions or comments, and am happy to help with problems or concerns that may arise. Marriage is a deep and complicated subject, relationships are rarely easy and it's often very difficult to know that the right or fair thing to do is - I hope that in some small way these thoughts and ideas have started people thinking about the answers for themselves.

Thanks, everyone, for writing in.

During the past two years, the amount of emails I've received from visitors around the world has both surprised and delighted me, and to mark my second year online I've decided to reproduce some of the most memorable emails - good and bad - that have come in from visitors who found inspiration enough to type out their comments and send them my way.