Posted by fxckfeelings on October 18, 2012
Assessing one’s self-esteem is like checking for Puxatony Phil’s shadow on Groundhog Day; while we have a long tradition of caring about its status, the results are fairly meaningless. After all, some people with strong characters don’t like themselves because they don’t measure up to high standards, and other people are madder at life’s unfairness than they are at themselves and underperform, not because they don’t like themselves, but because they care more about feeling good than getting strong. And of course, sometimes, it’s just cloudy. In general, it’s better to have a strong character, even if makes you kick yourself, than to see yourself as a deserving, entitled victim in order to break out of the rut of bad decisions and get out of Puxatony once and for all.
–Dr. Lastname
My 14-year-old son seems to care about his schoolwork but he’s unusually stubborn (the psychiatrist says he has Asperger’s syndrome) and he never does his schoolwork the way his teachers want him to. When they ask him to show his work in Math, he refuses, but he often gets the answers right anyway, just without any proof. When they ask him to do a draft of an essay, he just won’t do it, but then the final version he writes at the last minute is fairly reasonable. My son always feels guilty and angry, both for not being understood and not being able to do it correctly, and I’m worried that they’re not teaching him right, in a way that caters to his specific needs. My goal is to get them to give him better help.
You’ve been trying for many years to get your son to show his Math work and finish his preliminary drafts on time, and it just doesn’t happen. He’s had many teachers work with him and no one has found the answer. You’ve made an effort, and after showing your work, it’s fair to conclude “the answer” doesn’t exist.
In addition, telling teachers they need to improve is bound to make things worse since they already have the government telling them they’re responsible for their class’ performance, regardless of what those kids and their families are like. Holding them accountable for not getting results—the “show your work” of the teaching world—isn’t quite fair since you know it’s an impossible job.
Once you add your own personal “no child left behind” intervention, don’t be surprised if the teachers start to find fault with both you and your son in order to defray blame. Whatever happens next, it won’t involve praise or more positive results for anyone. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 11, 2012
Most people feel it’s their duty to help a loved one in need, but that instinct gets problematic when said loved one does not instinctively react with appreciation, or even satisfaction. When that happens, it’s natural to get mad, stop giving, and then feel vaguely responsible for their subsequent misery (especially when they keep blaming you for it). In your mind and theirs, to give or not to give seems like an inevitable choice, but not if giving something actually helps nothing; if you stay focused on giving what you believe is truly helpful, rather than on what they ask for, you can give the people you care about what they actually need without going broke or being forced to be critical or to betray your basic, positive commitment. At that point, regardless of whether they feel hurt, deprived, or grateful, you can be confident you’re doing right by them, your instincts, and your bank account.
–Dr. Lastname
My friends tell me I’m an enabler because I continue to take care of my wife even though she’s got a bad oxy habit, refuses help, and uses my support to stay high. I understand what they’re saying, but they don’t understand what would happen if I put her out on the street. She doesn’t care what happens to her—she’ll go without eating, ignore the kids, have sex with dealers—anything to keep her supply going. I got her to treatment a few times, and even had her court-committed to a 90-day program, but she never really committed to it. If I confront her, she flips out. My friends say my kindness is killing her and preventing her from “hitting bottom,” which is the only way she’ll ever get motivated to recover. Meanwhile, I’m afraid of her becoming totally dependent on her dealers and winding up with HIV or dead in the street. My goal is to find the best way to help her.
While you and your friends are both right in fearing for your wife’s life, you’ve all got it wrong if you think that love, gentle or tough, will work to help her, or do anything but backfire.
As your friends say, she can misuse your support to stay addicted longer and harder, possibly killing herself. As you say, if you throw her out or confront her, she may well destroy herself to spite you and/or prove that there’s no bottom that doesn’t have a sub-basement.
It’s understandable that you’d make it your goal to help her, but your efforts have only been successful in proving it can’t be done). Instead, work to avoid hurting her and protecting yourself while preserving her access to help. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 8, 2012
Giving up on love is supposed to be a bad thing, but that’s in a world where love is always precious and beautiful, not potentially destructive and ugly. There are lots of things you love and can’t and/or shouldn’t have, and others that you can have but at an unacceptable price. The real achievement is not gaining what you love, but knowing when it’s not worth it and not losing faith entirely when you must give it up. Giving up on love isn’t always a bad thing, but giving up on delusional notions about love is always a good idea.
–Dr. Lastname
My boyfriend is a really nice guy, but for reasons that I don’t understand, I just don’t love him anymore. He says he wants us to be friends, and that’d be OK with me if he wasn’t obviously still in love with me. It’s always awkward, getting a call from him every day, and knowing he’s really waiting for my response when he emails me, that makes me very uncomfortable. If he comes by, I know he’s looking for signs that I’m seeing someone else. I know it bothers him if I tell him we can’t get together. He doesn’t press me, but I see the pain in his eyes. I feel guilty because I care about him and want to be friends, but I’d be a lot more comfortable not seeing him. I feel guilty about dumping him—he really doesn’t deserve it—but I can’t seem to find a way to stop hurting him, which is what my goal is.
One of the many risks of falling in love, besides in-laws and herpes, is falling for someone who doesn’t love you back. At that point, you technically have two choices—not seeing them, or seeing them and knowing they don’t love you—but really one option, and that is, to feel like absolute shit.
I assume you loved your boyfriend initially, so you’re not guilty of playing with his feelings, just ceasing to return them. That’s why it’s hard not to feel guilty and responsible for this impossibly painful situation, particularly if you’re former love-partner can’t let go and pleads with you for relief, not knowing he’s actually making himself feel worse (and dragging you down with him).
What you have to remember is that you didn’t write the book of love, so you’re not responsible for the way love’s bonds form and fracture. Knowing what you know, however, you are responsible for doing your best to protect yourself and others from getting hurt. That’s why you go slow in making or inviting commitment, and try not to let the thrill of falling in love or the excitement of sex determine your decisions. That’s also why you want to be a good friend to him, although the best way to do that is by cutting him off, at least for now.
Your boyfriend tells you that it hurts less if he gets to see you, but you know he’s saying that because of immediate need, not long-term vision. Trust your own observations as you ask yourself whether contact with you is doing more good than harm to either of you. Remember, the issue isn’t whether he feels much better after seeing you, but whether, with time, he shows signs of letting go and moving on. What you observe likely jibes with your experience of what usually happens; he’s hanging on, and continued contact prolongs his agony while providing temporary relief.
If that’s the case—and you must trust your own judgment in this—good friends say good-bye. Make it clear you’re not rejecting him or expressing anger or disrespect; you’re simply doing what you think is necessary and that you have more confidence in your own judgment in this situation than in his. He might get angry or hate you for a bit, and while being hated feels pretty bad, it’s the first step to getting over you, which is good for everyone.
It’s sad that you can’t protect him from hurt, but that’s not something you control or should feel guilty about. All you can do is manage the damage as well as you can and enjoy your two less-shitty choices; learning from this experience or falling in love again without a net, risking more guilt, herpes, or worse.
STATEMENT:
“I feel guilty denying friendship to a guy I’ve hurt for no good reason and like very much, but I know his feelings are too strong to allow us to be friends and that I’m the one who must force the break-up that will allow him to move on.”
I’ve had some success as an actor and I love acting, but I’m turning 40 and I haven’t been getting any callbacks recently. My wife is very supportive, and my day job isn’t bad, but we’re always short of cash and there really isn’t enough money for all the things our kids are starting to need. I’ve got to decide whether it’s worth continuing to try to do the work I love or give up and get serious about a “real life” career. It’s depressing, but my goal is to decide.
Never believe that graduation speech bullshit about how everyone is supposed to wind up doing a job they love; maybe that happens in some fair world, but not in this one. What that graduation bloviater should have said is that doing something you love for a living is wonderful, but it’s a treat that most people don’t get to experience, except sometimes and part-time.
Given that sad fact, of course you should have pursued the possibility of an acting career and done your best to get trained, prepare for auditions, and experience rejection as almost no non-performer ever experiences it…which appears to be what you did. As an actor-survivor, you must have balls of steel.
Your goal, however, is not to pursue acting till you drop; it’s to act if you can, while respecting your other priorities, which, in your case, include partnership and parenthood. It’s natural to define success in terms of acting—getting jobs/paid, critical acclaim, and the pleasure of doing it—but it’s a much more significant success, (as well as being more frustrating and painful), to balance the pull and obsession of an acting career with your other priorities and make the compromises that fit with your values.
You’re asking yourself the right questions and now it’s time to weigh your options. On the one hand, add up your love for acting, and on the other hand, the likelihood of its providing you with a living, the time to be a parent, and your own needs for other things, like security and vacations. At some point, if time is running out and your acting prospects aren’t too hot, the time for tough decisions arrives.
Don’t scare yourself by saying “that’s the death of my dream,” or, “now I have to admit to myself that I’ve failed.” Your feelings may feed that kind of negative spiral, but your job is to know better and remind yourself that you have more than one dream, that you’ve done your best to pursue them all, and that the only control you have in life, other than trying your best, is to make hard choices realistically. That may not be how fan magazines or graduation speakers define success, but that’s the grown-up definition.
STATEMENT:
“I hate backing away from acting and I’m scared that will be the end of my career, but life is short, money is tight, and I’ve got other priorities. What makes me a responsible parent and partner is that I’m ready to make tough decisions and, if they hurt, I can take it.”
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 1, 2012
Most humans instinctively avoid conflict—in the face of hostility, our reflex is to stay out of it, hit the deck, or make a run for it, except when we’re dealing with family, when it’s much harder to escape. That’s when we feel obliged to wheel, deal, and peace-make until the situation becomes bearable. Unfortunately, if the source of conflict can’t be quelled or appeased, trying to make peace usually makes things worse. So, until you can figure out whether you’re responsible for breaking or making the peace, give up on finding a resolution and go back to staying both out of it and true to doing what’s right.
–Dr. Lastname
I understand why my grown son wants to rest up at my place for a week before letting his mother know that he has returned home after working abroad for a couple of years—my ex-wife is sticky, needy and manipulative, which is why she’s my ex—but I’m afraid she’ll blame me for keeping our son away from her, even though it’s his choice. So my goal is to figure out how to get my son to stop feeding his mother’s paranoia about me, which will get her complaining to our other kids, who will blame me. I wish I could get this conflict to stop.
Before worrying about your ex’s tendency to blame you for things that aren’t your responsibility, ask yourself what, as a matter of principle, you think your son’s responsibilities are.
If your son’s mother wasn’t so eager to cast blame, you would probably say that he should keep her informed as a matter of showing respect and letting her know that he cares. He doesn’t owe her an explanation for which parent he chooses to see first (when your parents are divorced, you can’t stay with both), but after two years away, waiting to contact his mother for a week would be hurtful to her or any parent, even those who don’t dispense guilt with glee. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on September 20, 2012
As feelings go, guilt has as much to do with crime as love has to do with partnership; both are strong feelings that can get triggered by instant, mysterious neurologic responses, regardless of our individual beliefs about right, wrong, and what’s good for us. So, just as you shouldn’t decide someone is your soul-mate after two drinks, don’t immediately assume it’s your job to atone and/or feel better if someone’s look or tone of voice triggers feelings of guilt. Learn to tolerate that guilt until you’ve had a chance to consult your beliefs and judge for yourself. Otherwise you’ll find yourself trapped in a doomed committed relationship, whether it’s one of romance or repentance.
–Dr. Lastname
While I usually spend weekends visiting my father at his beach house in the summer, I stayed away this year because he told me he wanted to have a private talk with me, which historically means giving me a lecture on how much I’ve disappointed him. I’ve put up with it in the past, but I’m sick of hearing it and fighting with him, so avoiding him just seemed smarter. I think it was a good idea to stay away, but now, whenever I call him to check in and be pleasant, he acts as if he’s too injured and disappointed to continue the conversation for more than a minute or two, which makes me feel guilty. I want to explain to him that I can’t see him because I want to avoid a negative conversation. My goal is to stop feeling so bad about doing a good thing.
Every guilt trip requires a traveling companion, and that doesn’t include the person who sent you off on your journey of remorse with a scornful “bon voyage.”
You’re actually accompanied by an internal collaborator, a side of your personality that kicks in reflexively, obediently, and without question to zap you with instant guilt for the sin of failing to make someone happy, regardless of said someone’s jerky behavior, or your being innocent.
Most of us have such a collaborator living in our brains, and some of those collaborators are easily triggered by a dirty look from anyone, be they parents or strangers. Companions like these aren’t so much guilt-trippers as guilt jet-setters, and it takes a constant effort to keep them, and you, feeling grounded and at home with your own decisions. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on September 17, 2012
Some very smart people are brilliant at expressing the way they feel and acting on those feelings tenaciously while remaining inept at putting those feelings into a broader perspective. For them, feelings are facts, allowing them to act first, ask questions never. If you happen to be such a person and these words aren’t meaningless, be aware that there are ways to learn a different, more value-driven way of thinking. If you happen to have been written off by such a person, know that it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the impulses of an otherwise-smart person for whom feelings, not facts, are an infallible truth.
–Dr. Lastname
Growing up, I always had a feeling that the things that promised happiness to other people didn’t work out for me, I hated being alive, and I didn’t mind who knew it, even though my family always told me I was being too emotional and that I refused to admit or remember the moments of my childhood that were fun or happy (no idea what they’re talking about). Anyway, I grew up, found steady work and got married, but the marriage ended a couple years ago. I’ve tried medications for depression, and the 3 or 4 I’ve tried haven’t done anything but cause side effects. So my point is that I’ve had it. I really don’t see the point in staying alive when I feel miserable most of the time and nothing has worked out. I’m not feeling suicidal at the moment because I’ve been busy at work and that makes me feel useful, but I doubt that I’ll want to hold it together when the next layoff comes around and I have nothing to do. My shrink wants me to stay positive and fight my negative thinking but I think it’s more than negative thinking; it’s a negative reality and I’ve had enough of it. My goal is to challenge anyone, including you, to show me that life is worth living.
While depressed feelings can be very powerful in persuading you that there’s no point in living, feelings aren’t facts. Just because you’ve always felt like life isn’t worth living doesn’t mean that it’s true now or in the future.
When people say to “stay positive,” what they really mean is that you should look at the bigger picture, beyond whatever negativity you happen to be feeling, and identify long-term goals that are meaningful in terms of values (like doing good, supporting the people or causes you care about, or sharing love), not in terms of feelings or outcomes.
As long as your life reflects your values, like trying to be decent to others and doing a good day’s work, you can tell yourself that your efforts are worthwhile, regardless of how badly things are going at the moment…unless, of course, your brain is unable to see facts and feelings as two different things. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on September 13, 2012
If your parents or in-laws make you feel helpless, even though you’re now a parent yourself, it’s seldom useful to examine how or why they do it since knowledge seldom changes your feelings, except to make them more powerful. Instead, get the courage to pull the parenting card yourself and develop polite rules for stopping bad behavior and keeping things friendly. You’ll be surprised at how quickly your feelings will change if you act as a boss when that’s what you really are. And if they don’t like it, they can go to their rooms, with or without supper.
–Dr. Lastname
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with my father…I think he’s a decent guy and I owe him for everything he gave me as a kid, but his anger has been a problem my whole life. He and my mother divorced when I was pretty young so I only saw him on holidays and some weekends, but even after that, at least once per visit he’d get so frustrated with me that he’d go into rages that left me genuinely terrified (he never went too far physically or verbally, but I’d still get really shaken, and once it was over, he never mentioned it again). I made it worse as I got older, because I’d yell back, which pushed him even further. Now I’m the mother of 2 young kids, I’d like them to spend some time with him (and so would he), but I want to protect them from the possible fear/trauma that I had to experience, even if it wasn’t criminal, per se. So how do I keep a lid on the fireworks without keeping him out of my life?
You’re right to regard big loud parent-child blowouts as tough on kids (and anything else around, including other people, pets, plates, etc.), and you’re wise enough to look for alternatives that don’t involve too much suffering by you or your kids, assuming the worst-case Dadageddon.
Remember, however, that you’re the mother, which means you make the rules of engagement. When you were a kid, you probably bristled under your father’s scary authority, but after all these years, you’re free at last. You’re the adult now and the parent, so you’re not just the boss of you, but your brood as well. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on September 10, 2012
If you feel persistently mistreated by your spouse, sharing your emotions is often ineffective; while your feelings meant the world to him at the start of your relationship, like a car, they lose value with every mile that gets put on. Unless your partner sees the light—which, as a partnership gets older, becomes less and less likely—telling one another how you really feel usually leads to nothing but a victim-off that’ll make you both wish you’d never started dating in the first place. Before opening your mouth, learn how to do your own damage assessment, spot the choices over which you have independent control, and put together a plan for making the best of what you’ve got. Who knows, maybe if you do what you think is right about your half of things, you’ll get more miles out of your relationship without having to trade it in.
–Dr. Lastname
I have been with my man for seven years, but as time goes on, he is getting more financially controlling and disrespectful. I usually let it slide, but I’m sick of feeling like a pushover. How do I stand up for myself? I need help bringing out “the bitch inside.”
Even when you’ve got good reason to feel badly treated by your partner, releasing “the bitch inside” will just give him a good excuse to dismiss your issues as trivial and over-emotional. In other words, no matter how justified your anger, acting like an angry bitch will only succeed in getting you treated like one.
Yes, you may get him to sit up, listen, and mend his ways, but that’s unusual, particularly with long-term partners with whom a long history can serve to justify whatever they’re doing. The more he annoys you, the more successful he feels.
While unleashing the bitch is tempting, that kind of reaction usually just causes guys to duck, retaliate, and ultimately respond with their own list of complaints. Better, then, to keep your inner bitch in strict lockdown until you figure out how bad your problem is and what you can actually do about it. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 30, 2012
If you listen to (other) experts, psychiatric treatment should always begin with objective evidence, which then determines a diagnosis, which directs us to proven, effective treatments. This expert, on the other hand, thinks that “evidence-based psychiatry” would be very nice if we happened to know lots more than we do, but it is one of life’s great ironies that the organ we know the least about is the home of knowledge itself, the brain. Until we can fully wrap our heads around our minds and how they work, scientific thinking in psychiatry is often wishful thinking. It can actually get in the way of making good, practical decisions and accepting the necessity of living with the unknown, be it a mystery illness or the grey mush in our skulls.
–Dr. Lastname
I’ve been very confused lately because of what’s going on inside me. My father did some bad things to me while I was growing up—things that I just began remembering a year or so ago (sorry, I can’t label it). Since then, other memories surfaced as well, but not many at all. Most of my memories of my childhood are snapshots that are just little moments in time, separated by years in between that I just don’t remember. Anyway, the thing that distresses me is that sometimes, but not all the time, I’ll feel like I have another part of me who is talking in my head. This came to my awareness mostly after the memories started coming up, although I feel like maybe it happened occasionally before. For instance, recently someone asked me a question, and a child’s voice answered in my head. I have other instances of similar things like that happening. One time it seemed like there were two parts conversing with each other and I was just observing the conversation, per se. That being said, I am educated enough about what happened to me and the consequences of it to know that I think I’m describing DID, but from what I’ve read, I don’t think I have it. I don’t switch to other personalities, and I don’t really lose time or anything like that…but I do know I’m not qualified to make that kind of assessment (and I know you can’t just by reading this letter). But my question does relate to that: is it possible to have the kinds of experiences I’ve described and not have DID? Since I’m pretty sure I don’t have it, I feel like I’m just some crazy, messed up person for no reason. It terrifies me to share this with anyone, but I don’t know what to do anymore, and it’s getting harder and harder to keep going.
Diagnosis in psychiatry is never precise and, when given too much attention, can do more harm than good. Until the day a mental illness diagnosis can be determined by peeing on a stick, all we can currently do is lump symptoms together and try to observe what happens to people who fall within an arbitrary category.
In the short run, knowing you’re not alone might be comforting, but it would tell you very little about what to expect from future symptoms or treatments. Worse, it would get you thinking of yourself as a diagnosis instead of as a person who’s trying to live life in spite of some disturbing, hard-to-understand symptoms.
As such a person, ask yourself what you most want to accomplish in this life, despite whatever’s going on in your head. For most people with traumatic childhoods, it’s always meaningful to be decent to others, whether they’re your kids, relatives, or friends. You know how easily people slip into abusiveness when they’re angry and how much it hurts, so you never take a good, supportive relationship for granted.
Most symptoms that impair the way you function won’t prevent you from being the person you want to be or doing what you really want to do, they’ll just slow you down and force you to work harder to think up alternative methods. A good coach helps you to accept your impairment without getting discouraged or demoralized.
So instead of looking for the ultimate shrink diagnostician, find a therapist who can act as a good coach, who isn’t too upset by symptoms, and is eager to see what you’re capable of, even when you’re distracted by traumatic memories, internal conversations or the sensations of observing yourself.
Consult a psychiatrist at least once or twice to get an overview of possible treatments, including medication. Of course, non-medical treatments almost always pose a lower risk, but many medications are relatively safe and require no more than a few weeks to try out. If your symptoms are sufficiently painful and/or disabling, and non-medical treatment is insufficient, then you owe it to yourself to check out every possibility.
Whatever symptoms you have, you want to do your best to manage them without letting them define your life. Keep up your diagnostic questions until you’re confident you’ve heard what the experts have to say, regardless of how unsatisfying that might be, and then forget about what caused your problems or how they might be categorized.
Your next step is to manage your burden and respect yourself for carrying it, even if the nature of that burden remains a mystery.
STATEMENT:
“My psychological symptoms spook me and leave me feeling distracted and distanced from myself, but they can’t take the meaning out of a good day’s work or a solid friendship. I may never figure out why I feel the way I do, or stop myself from feeling that way, but I can certainly lead my life according to my values regardless of the tricks my head likes to play on me.”
No one was more surprised than I when I suddenly got depressed about a year ago, because it’s not something that ever happened to me before. I lost energy, felt like crying, and got anxiety attacks. There was lots of pressure at work, but my job was safe, and I’ve never been prone to buckling under pressure. Now I could barely get to work and I didn’t give a damn about the projects that I was responsible for. My wife finally forced me to see a psychiatrist, I started to feel better on an antidepressant, and then my internist really surprised me by telling me my testosterone was low and I should try a trial of replacement therapy, which I did. Within 2 weeks I was back to normal and a few weeks later I stopped the antidepressant. So now I wonder whether I was really depressed or not or whether I should have tried antidepressant in the first place. My goal is to figure out my diagnosis so I’ll know what to expect.
Even on that rare occasion when a specific psychiatric diagnosis really matters, it doesn’t matter as much as you think. Yes, it was critical to your recovery that you and your doctors checked out testosterone deficiency as a possible cause of depression; the sudden, unexpected onset of your symptoms raised the odds of your having an unusual and potentially curable cause, which deserved an extensive workup of your hormone levels, vitamin levels, evidence of inflammation, etc., so congrats for making a good decision.
You also discovered that depressive symptoms may have many causes, making depression less of a diagnosis than a cluster of symptoms. So, much like aspirin, antidepressants can improve symptoms, no matter what the cause, if they work at all. (Unfortunately, no matter what the cause, antidepressant trials often fail [35% for each trial] and require lots of time [three to four weeks] before there are noticeable results.)
In addition to lucking out with both the diagnosis and the response to antidepressants, you learned a valuable lesson, which is that anyone can get depression. It wasn’t caused by bad psychological or medical hygiene, just bad luck. Getting depression often doesn’t have a deeper meaning other than that we live in a tough, unfair world where people often get sick for no reason, and sometimes that sickness makes your brain miserable.
Your own observations are the best guide to your prognosis. If you responded rapidly to getting testosterone replacement therapy, then you may be relatively unlikely to get depressive symptoms again (as long as you continue taking the testosterone, which you may need indefinitely). At some point, if you want to experiment with reducing the testosterone treatment, ask your physician about the odds and choose a good time for experimenting, when not too much else is going on in your life.
From what you know, there’s no reason to think that your prognosis—your expected luck—is worse than anyone else’s. You made good choices, which is an essential survival skill when you happen to live in a bad luck world.
STATEMENT:
“I’d love to take my mental health for granted the way I used to, and maybe I will, after enough time of not feeling depressed has passed, but there’s no escaping knowing how easy it is to get sick. I’m proud of having made good decisions and happy to have gotten lucky enough to almost balance the bad luck I had to get sick in the first place.”
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 27, 2012
Weddings and funerals are supposed to produce scripted emotional results, but life simply pushes too much muddy water under the bridge for human ceremonies to work out the way they’re supposed to, i.e., with great joy or catharsis, as opposed to resulting in a couple getting married or the survivors of a loved one being consoled. So when you’ve got a major change-of-life ceremony coming up that can’t perform the way it should, don’t feel like it, or you, has failed. As long as you see the greater purpose of the ceremony, there’s a way to not just get it over with, but make it accomplish something worthwhile.
–Dr. Lastname
When my husband left 3 years ago it came as a shock although we had been unhappy for a long time and both had affairs before (his secret, mine open). He insisted to me and our adult children that there was no one else, and was uncertain about divorce. He carried on spending a lot of time with the family, then told us he had recently started seeing a female former co-worker, but that it was not important. He then spent six months leading us all to believe that he wanted to save the marriage and taking me out on dinner dates, but he also took a holiday with the other woman, and said lots of things that failed to add up. Two years ago everything changed when the other woman confronted him at the family home and made a horrible scene and swore at me and our son. She was furious about all his lying to her and told us they had been involved for years, then they brawled in front of me and he ran away. Things are now amicable between us even though he is still involved with this person, but we are still not divorced and our kids have chosen not to meet her. Our daughter is to be married soon and I do not wish to receive this other woman at the wedding on account of her awful behavior to me and my son (I have not seen her since that day and she never apologized). Do I miss out on having my new partner attend or do I swallow my pride and invite her? It’s my daughter’s day and I want it to go well but feel humiliated at the prospect of having to be pleasant to this person. My goal is to behave with dignity and retain the moral high ground without sacrificing my principles.
Before asking yourself whether you would feel humiliated if your husband’s volatile girlfriend were invited to your daughter’s wedding, ask yourself what the goal of your daughter’s wedding is supposed to be (aside from a legal ceremony with cake).
Despite the numerous television shows, films, and monthly magazines that tell you otherwise, the primary goal of weddings isn’t to make the bride, or any one person, happy, because that goal becomes dangerous in a hurry, whether you’re talking about a wedding or life in general.
There’s too much about weddings that you can’t control, including the weather, having enough cake, and risking forced meetings between sworn enemies (see above) who have access to free alcohol and folding, potentially airborne chairs. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
