Category:
Marriage
There's two ways to read this. Either this guy really took the break-up hard. Or, after his wife left him, he decided to live exactly as he wanted, and he was the happiest man in the world.
I suspect there's a lot of married men who would revert to a caveman-like existence (perhaps to a less extreme degree) without the influence of their wives.
The
Deseret News noted that he was known only as "Darab." But otherwise there's no more info to be found about this mysterious, wifeless hermit.
Philadelphia Daily News - Oct 24, 1996
1966: After suffering from asthma for 15 years, Sigurd Lindh learned that he was allergic to his wife, Greta. He moved into a cabin 600 yards from their home, and his asthma cleared up.
It's pretty rare for spouses to be allergic to each other (as in, actually having a physical reaction to the other's presence, not just hating each other's guts). But it's doubly rare for a husband to be allergic to a wife. So Lindh was pretty unique. For whatever reason, the overwhelming majority of these spousal allergy cases involve wives allergic to their husbands. See
here and
here.
Detroit Free Press - June 2, 1966
Akron Beacon Journal - Sep 12, 1966
The final paragraph of this article sounds like it could be the start of a novel:
Mr. and Mrs. de Leon decided several days later they no longer were in love. It was then they learned they were married.
The Canonsburg Daily Notes - Aug 30, 1952
Did she hit her target, or miss?
Grand Prairie Daily News - May 13, 1954
In Gutersloh, Germany, police arrested Friedelina Kleine-Beek after she followed her husband to a local tavern, watched through the window as he raised a glass of beer to his lips, then carefully aimed a rifle and fired, shattering the glass, but leaving her husband unscathed.
February 1954: J. Frank Winebrenner, wed 72 years, when asked what the secret to his successful marriage was, replied, "We did little fussin'. We said little. Mostly we just set."
Looks like
Frank died in March 1955 and
Tressa in 1956. They're still "setting" together, saying little.
Chicago Daily Tribune - Feb 10, 1954
Los Angeles Times - Feb 4, 1954
BBC News reports on the case of Johanna Watkins who has a rare disorder (Mast Cell Activation Syndrome) that has caused her to become allergic to a whole bunch of stuff, including the scent of her husband. The allergy only developed after they got married.
At this point, they live in the same house but can no longer get close to each other. Instead they communicate via phone. Their "date night" involves watching a show together: "he will be three floors below me in a room on his laptop and I will be on mine and we'll watch the show at the same time and then text about it as we're watching it."
Scott and Johanna Watkins
This reminds me of the 1949 case of
Joyce Holdridge, aka the "Allergic Bride," who broke out in a rash every time she was near her husband. She was the first reported case of a wife who developed an allergy to her husband. (I wrote a fairly long article about her for about.com, but it looks like about.com has since deleted it.)
After the Holdridge case, quite a few women came forward claiming to be allergic to their husband. So allergic wives are definitely a recurring theme in weird news. For whatever reason, cases of husbands who are allergic to their wives are much rarer (although not nonexistent).
In its July 5, 1943 issue,
Time magazine noted the marriage in Pryor, Montana of Owen Smells and Mary Knows.
The marriage only lasted three years, but in that time they had a daughter, Theresa, who eventually married Joseph Rock Above and became
Theresa Smells Rock Above.
Findagrave.com lists
a grave for Owen Smells which may or may not be the same Owen that married Mary. I'm not sure. But the dates seem about right.
Helena Independent Record - Oct 1, 1946
August 1973: Jean Roth sat in the lobby of a building at Southern Illinois University with signs that read: "I must be married by August 15th for inheritance purposes."
She explained to anyone who asked that she would give $50,000 to any man who agreed to marry her for a year. Many men immediately volunteered to help her. In addition, "Scores of men called the campus newspaper to get the girl's telephone number."
But it turned out, not surprisingly, that the offer was bogus. It was all just a sociology experiment dreamed up by Dr. James M. Henslin, the teacher of a Sociology of Deviant Behavior class that Jean was enrolled in. Explained Dr. Henslin: "In this [class], we deal with deviance from the norm or deviance from what is expected of people. It was an experiment to create a form of deviance and look at the reactions."
So it sounds like it was one of those
breaching experiments that became all the rage in sociology classes around that time (late 60s/early 70s).
The class had chosen Jean to be the heir in need of a hubby and had then coached her on how to respond to potential questions. In fact, Jean was already married. Her husband, also a student at the university, reportedly thought the experiment "was stupid."
Ogden Standard-Examiner - Jul 29, 1973
It reminds me of the
Dormitory Escape Plan of 1967 that I posted about a couple of months ago, in which a young woman had advertised for a husband as a way to escape from the all-female dormitory that she hated living in.
Also, it seems that Dr. Henslin is the author of several sociology textbooks that are still in use —
Essentials of Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach and
Social Problems: A Down to Earth Approach. He's
now retired from Southern Illinois University.
There's in-law problems, and then there's this:
The Morning News (Wilmington, Delaware) - Sep 18, 1956
Wife Complains In-Law Under Bed
SINGAPORE, Sept. 17 — A young Chinese wife complained in court today that her mother-in-law always slept under the bed she shared with her husband.
Them Kim Kow said she had left her husband but would go back to him if her mother-in-law could be forced to sleep in a separate room.
An adjournment was asked while the court and attorneys considered the case.