Oh, for the love of all that is holy....

If I weren't living this, I wouldn't believe it.
My ex, at 400 Sunday morning, called demanding that I become a co-wife. Normally, I ignore his late night phone calls, but some half dozen calls in a row can be hard to just ignore. I responded to remind his sorry self what time it was, that I was pregnant, and to generally leave me the frick alone.He suggested this nonsense as a possible solution to the dispute over separation terms.
Never mind that it would put a quick, ugly end to his military career; never mind that it would be incredibly fiscally irresponsible. That chowderhead is ears deep in debt, and he suggested buying not one, but two houses? Whatever he's on, I want a hit during labor.
It also wouldn't fix the fact that he's an abusive, cheating jerk- it would only compound the troubles, as abusing and cheating on two women is not better than doing so to one. The inadequacies that he's trying to fill are his, not mine, and a second wife would just be a second spotlight on his insecurities. So I turned him down, only to have to deal with his angry outbursts and one of his girlfriends being sent to harass me via IM.
A friend of mine suggested the possible existence of a "Muslim Male Syndrome"- a deep-seated insecurity, combined with control issues, that is born of the aftereffects of colonialism and/or racism, the difficulties of being a much-maligned religious minority, and all the trappings of imported and domestic patriarchy and misogyny. Give it all a gloss of religious authority, and you get very sick males given a rubber stamp for their behavior in mosques and among Muslims. It would certainly explain my ex and any number of Muslim males I've known. But how do you treat an ailment whose symptoms include mass denial? And how do you prevent the development of a disease whose methods of transmission include most newsmedia and the Friday khutbah? As someone who may be hatching a Muslim male of her very own (I don't plan on finding out Schenectady's sex before birth), these questions have a new and distressing relevance.
I'm going to try to attach Schenectady's pic- if it works, try not to call too much attention to the fact that s/he looks like an alien in the pic.