All Comments on 'February Sucks - the Details Matter'

This story is brilliant but tragic. My overwhelming sense is that this will never truly be resolved. Linda and Jim live in irreconcilable fantasy worlds. Linda cannot give up her experience with Marc. It's become an essential part of her self-concept. What others see as a destructive, heedless and selfish sexual escapade, she sees as a peak experience of self-actualization and personal validation. Her venomous climactic tirade shows that she will go to any length to protect the specialness of her "glorious affair." This necessitates her conviction that her love for Marc and Jim are not "incompatible."

Jim, too, lives in a fantasy world, in which simple adherence to his menschness will win out. He says he will forgive and start fixing their marriage, but he has to know deep down that her need to preserve and dote on her "glorious affair" will never allow him to heal. For him to heal she would have to really cut Marc out her mind and heart, and that she is clearly unwilling to do.

We're used to seeing stories with characters who can change and grow. I don't see that here.

One last item: a lot of commenter, including the estimable NoTalentHack have concluded that Linda is a sociopathic narcissist. They'd better be able to show their psychiatric credentials, because by that standard, anyone who has a memorable love affair fits the diagnosis. Linda reminds me a bit of Emma Bovary, without the arsenic.

Gave this a 5 because the score listed for the story is ridiculously low. People who grade on the basis of how much they agree with the plot are doing other readers a significant disservice.

This is well-written. It presents a woman who very likely accurately represents a certain segment of women. This portrayal is definitely consistent with the real women that GA described in his introduction. And yes, she deserves to be hated and reviled. Because she really, really has no clue what love actually is. Lot of women like that. Men, too.

The problem at the end is that we have a foundation laid for divorce and Jim at the end does a 180. It's nearly impossible for most men to accept his decision at the end. Note, while lots of husbands with young kids would stay and try to make a marriage work, they would rationalize it somehow to make it less jarring than what we get here.

Of course, perhaps that's the message of this story -- the RAAC of all RAACs by a guy who isn't a willing cuck but incredibly weak.

A well written and extremely painful story but their marriage should not and would not survive. Through her journaling we see how she truly feels about what happened and that she will always relive the experience. Each time she does it will shove a knife in his heart. Ultimately continuing his pain and emasculation.

Jim should divorce her and move on before his anger morphs into depression and either she leaves him or he kills himself.

Can’t give a good score to a story where I hate all the adult characters

meh, other sequels were much better, bleackhearts was incomplete but was on the way to being a good sequel, rk

Yes, everything up to the last couple of sentences had the feeling of truth. Then you bombed it. With that amount of pain, and the so very real emasculation you so vividly portrayed, there is no way. For his very sanity, he has to divorce her and move on.

Damn didn't think someone could make Linda more unlikable. She should've just done everyone a favor and stayed the extra day. Jim I thought got progressively weaker in the original because everyone around him was telling him to "take it on the chin" and "think about your kids" and "Really gonna throw away 10 years", in this one he just has a cheating lying wife. He already knew that she was though and still decided to take her word on the phone. What did she do? Emasculate him more, and lie that she would never write it down again, unless it was for her fantasies of course. They should've just divorced they'd never be 100% honest with themselves.