My favorite radio station aired an interesting story last week that generated both discussions and laughter. It seems this couple had been happily married for several years and had recently had their first child. What should have been a joyous occassion immediately became the exact opposite when the husband, totally horrified, declared this child the ugliest baby he had ever seen. Since both he and his wife were reasonably nice looking, his immediate thought was that his wife must have had an affair with a most unattractive person. The husband confronted his wife but was totally unprepared for her admission that she had not had an affair.....she had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of plastic surgery several years before they met. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of surgery ?!!! By the time she met her husband she must have been more plastic than Barbie! Although the great philosphers always say "Love is blind", this wasn't so in this husband's case. Not only did he file for divorce, he sued her for misrepresentation.
Now, one of my first thoughts after hearing this was, unless this woman landed here from some far away planet or was in the witness protection program, wouldn't it stand to reason that her husband had either met someone from her family or at least seen pictures of relatives in the years they had been together. Besides, unless she resembled Quasimoto on his worst day, how bad could she have looked? And I also wondered how far back into his own family history this man had looked. It could be possible that some of his ancestors were less than pleasing to look at.
So the discussion among the morning DJ's revolved around how obligated partners are to divulge personal information to their prospective mates. Granted, it may have come as a shock to find out how much the wife had done to change her looks but should she have told her husband before marriage? Some felt that the information was important enough to have had an effect on the man's decision to marry her or at least consider having children with her. Others thought that since beauty is a superficial thing, perhaps the man should have been able to get past her changing her appearance and still been able to love her for who she was instead of what she looked like.
One DJ seemed to have a good handle on the situation though. He compared this problem to buying a used car you fell in love with and after having it for a while, you found out it had a major problem. As he said " After all, if you still loved the car, you'd just fix the problem and keep the car anyway". Seems reasonable to me. But I guess in the material world we live in, it's as easy to trade wives in as it is cars, especially when the shine wears off and the engine starts to knock.