Emotional Deafness... A Tragedy

Sooooo.... I have a premise about a malady which has gone long undiagnosed. As you are all aware love and strong emotions can cause a variety of maladies. Sympathetic illnesses when a loved one is sick. There is of course being “lovesick”. There are all of the maladies and violence that can result from feeling really, really passionately about God and religion like... Crusades, Jihads, and perhaps a Babylonian Captivity or two. Simpler things like hickeys (love bites) and of course being blinded by love.

But I believe that there is one awful, undiagnosed illness which has been afflicting myself, and married men like myself for eons and it is time for the truth to be told. I am calling this particular, wasting, debilitating disease, “love deafness” or LD for short. LD is absolutely debillitating and inevitably is misunderstood by a spouse. Spouses have often misdiagnosed LD as:
1. Inattentiveness
2. Insensitivity
3. Incivility
4. Inbreeding
This is totally unfair. Do you criticize someone with a disease for having that disease? They can’t help it. Indeed in my case I cannot hear almost anything my wife says. Every day it is the same weary trial. My wife tells me important things like:
When we are going to her mothers
What type of chocolate she likes
What is her favorite drink at Starbucks
When our children’s birthdays are
When are we going to her mothers
I want this information. I want to hear it. I want to retain it. I do not want to say, “seriously? We are going to your mom’s tonight?” I want to know so I can emotionally prepare. I want to know because I do not like her rolling her eyes and sighing heavily like I was mentally retarded (although this disability is similarly tragic in many ways).

Sadly it is a progressive disease. I have found it has advanced to apply to my children (who I also dearly love). They are often telling me about events at school, relationships, disappointments, achievements. I seem to be listening... but I just cannot seem to hear them no matter how hard I try. The disease is ravaging my family and costing me the affection of the ones I love the most.

More upsetting is that there seems to be no cure. it is very likely that I will need to be starting up a new not for profit in order to raise funds for research. I am reasonably confident that the Monsanto people can do something here if we give them a few dollars. maybe I can get Sally Struthers to do the adds or perhaps have Sarah Mc Gloughlin sing some insufferably sappy song as pathetically I wander around the house looking for where my wife told me she put the grocery list.