Why a husband has embraced the idea of a 140-million-mile long-distance relationshipBecause the wife, Sonia Van Meter, is one of the finalists for Mars One's one-way "trip to Mars":
When he married Van Meter five years ago, Jason Stanford didn’t realize he may be signing up for the world’s longest-distance marriage. He details his emotional journey in a 4,000-word essay in this month’s issue of Texas Monthly, in which he explains how he moved from seeing his wife’s ambition as a “personal horror story” to “the world’s grandest adventure.”Oh, gag me. The reason Jason Stanford can afford to be so encouraging of his wife's Mars dreams is that there is zero chance she is actually going. Zero. Mars One is a hoax, pure and simple. What a dream -- the guy gets to pose as the most supportive man on earth, really willing to back his wife through anything, when actually all he has to do is keep his mouth shut for a few years about the actual cost of space travel. They can lie around and talk about the great Mars adventure and he can dream with her and tell her he loves how bold she is, all the while thinking that this is a lot less expensive than sharing your wife's dream for new kitchen.
Initially, when Van Meter was one of 200,000 applicants, the Mars idea was “a novelty, great cocktail chatter,” Stanford writes. Van Meter told the BBC that she initially embraced a lighthearted approach to the mission.
“I thought: ‘Shoot, this sounds like fun!'” she said. “I didn’t think there was the slightest chance that I would be selected, I just wanted to be a part of it.”
Reality began to set in when the application pool was whittled down to 1,000. Suddenly, the mission transformed from theoretical amusement to a real-life possibility. Initially, Stanford said, he was slow to accept the idea that he might lose his wife to space travel. . . .
But for the sake of his marriage, he said this week, he eventually concluded that he could not dither — he either supported his wife or he didn’t. With that realization, his decision become simple.
“You don’t say ‘I do’ and have an asterisk there,” he said. “When we got married, we promised to support each other for the rest of our lives.”
He added: “Either I’m her husband or I’m not.”
Please.
UPDATE: My elder daughter says you don't get any husband points for supporting your wife's dreams "if your wife's dreams are stupid."
2 comments:
UPDATE: My elder daughter says you don't get any husband points for supporting your wife's dreams "if your wife's dreams are stupid."
Well and succinctly put! Out of the mouths of babes, and all that...
uh, sure you do. it's a matter of degree. if 'stupid' is totally, unalterably disastrous in many ways, of course one will ultimately hear "why didn't you stop me?" and if it's a moderately defective stupid, there are points involved especially if the poor results can be cleverly turned around. garden-variety stupid, come on, of course there's good karma from being supportive.
i think we all know that mars is a one-way trip to a death-trap so the first case likely applies, but keep in mind, for someone to seriously consider going to a death-trap in a one-way tin can, that means they are (or at least she is) serious shoot-for-the-stars, all-about-the-journey kinds of people. infinitesimal survival odds doing something pedestrian, ok that's totally, unalterably disastrous. but infinitesimal survival odds doing Something Big, well that's going to counterbalance somewhat.
btw as a sort of risk manager, this is professionally and personally just plain ridiculous, but i'm not going to lose sleep over some other people doing it.
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