[shswkna]

There is another, third perspective one can have on this.

One can both find good reasons and explanations for his behaviour, and at the same time his choices can be judged harshly.

I feel we have to heed the complexity of life and the situations people end in.

Each of us has different tendencies. Some are by nature straight shooters. Others again, overthink a situation and lack the cognitive or emotional intelligence to always arrive at the perfect answer for a situation we are in.

Both things can be true:

Him making a choice that seems inevitable for the situation he is in.

Also can be true, him wasting the life of another person (his wife) and him not seeing it this way. This is a bad deed from her perspective and can remain so.

But consider, for example, that he probably resented her and she was proxy for society’s pressure to confirm. Or, he thought that he gave her what she wanted (kids) and provided for them. In his eyes he paid his dues and got nothing out of it.

He might have realised that if he doesn’t get those small escapes (the affairs), he might not make it. You won’t know the make up of his reward system and his emotional make up.

When she wanted the divorce, his coping behaviours became habit. And he might not have been able to see a way out, or not have had the strength to change his reward seeking habits.

We also don’t exactly hear how he died in detail.

Im am not excusing him, but I am trying to be devil’s advocate to your absolutist stance, to provide a counterweight.

[itsalwaysgood]

The author refers to their dad as a coward.

When the wife wanted to divorce, the dad recruited his mother-in-law to convince the wife to stay on the marriage.

He was selfishly hiding information and making lifelong decisions for everyone because "he knew best."

The dad died of a heart attack. His family was too ignorant to know a quick drive to the hospital was the best action. They didn't know because the 911 operator told them to wait for the ambulance (for legal reasons, they will not tell you to rush to the hospital. Imagine the liability of a wreck).

There's no need to play devil's advocate. Private decisions were made, and we all have the privilege of reading about the outcome. It gives us much to consider, and not much else.