An Ordinary Tale

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Starring:

She (the wife) is a disliked, emotionally abandoned child in the family by parents, was subjected to physical abuse by her father and mother, as well as manipulation of guilt and fear of loss. I am convinced that she had a normal childhood.

He (the husband) is the only child in the family, ardently attached to his mother, who ruled him all his life with the help of accusations and manipulations, invaded his life. My relationship with my father is cold. I am convinced that he had a normal childhood.

Tie:

She has never seen another model of relationship between a man and a woman, other than the one that her parents showed her. She is constantly unhappy with him and constantly finds something to be offended for. A step to the left, a step to the right from her hopes and expectations to him - and… failure in offense. For a long time. She thinks that he, like her father once, poses a threat to her, and plunging him into guilt, controlling him is the only way to protect herself, survive and not lose him.

He doesn't understand how to please her. He does not realize that she reminds him of his own mother in her endless nagging. He does not even flicker in his mind that these women are somehow related to each other: wife and mother. Constantly forced to make excuses, to apologize. Over time, apologies are replaced by rudeness and harsh words - those that he did not dare to say once to his domineering mother. Now he has grown stronger and can not only offend her, his wife, but also hit, if necessary. His defensive aggression hurts her, and she is offended again and … is already afraid of him. To survive, to defeat him, she is even more offended, cries, suffers. Now there is no need to come up with a reason. With even greater force, her reproaches hit his sore spot - guilt. He is guilty, which means he will not go anywhere, will not leave. To free himself from the fetters of guilt, he rebukes her in return. His anger and irritation at her is off the charts. He goes to treason. She doesn't know anything about it. And he does not understand how he could have done this. And the feeling of guilt floods him again. She becomes more and more vulnerable and takes offense at his every move, at his silence, at his absence. For all.

Climax:

A vicious circle: guilt increases resentment, resentment fuels guilt. Hate, pain, despair and … fear of losing kill their sex life. And their deafness to each other's claims is growing stronger every year.

Years pass. Children are already growing up. The behavior of children as if mirrors all that unexpressed aggression hidden in two once-in-love souls. Here the son got drunk for the first time and was rude to his mother. Here is a daughter - a teenager - did not come home to spend the night. What to do?

The family is in a protracted point of crisis. At a fork, at a crossroads. At that very large gray fairy stone, on which three arrows are drawn with the inscriptions:

“You will go to the right - you will find the pain of parting, emptiness, loneliness and unhappy joint children, and … a lack of understanding where to live, on what means. You will find hope that you are about to meet someone else and everything will be different with him. But when you meet, you will understand that you look like a pony running in the circle of your destiny …"

“If you go to the left, you will find psychosomatics, in a mild version - depression, insomnia, hypertension, arthritis, gastritis, or even worse. But in this state it is easier to manage the situation in the family. The patient can do anything. And a child may well be sick, because a sick child cements the family …"

“If you go straight, you will find yourself in a psychotherapist's office. Expensive. Hurt. For a long time. Fearfully. Ashamed. And yet, life is about change. There are many of them along the way. But this painful uncertainty … And where are the guarantees? There are guarantees only in the two ways described above, and they are one hundred percent. Where you go after psychotherapy, you will know when you go through it. But this will no longer be an ordinary fairy tale."

Interchange:

Not many people get the idea to go straight. Sometimes it is easier to leave life than to realize your childhood traumas and take responsibility for how you built your life under their influence. After all, it is easier to explain everything with the evil eye, someone else's envy, or the madness of the other one who so wants to remake. Not myself, but him, her … It's so easy to say: “But I have nothing to do with it. I am a victim of circumstances and evil people, black magic, envy ….

Yes. Something happens to each of us in childhood. All dads and moms traumatize their children. Even moms and dads psychologists are no exception. Why is that? Yes, because only through trauma, recognition of what happened once, through taking responsibility for your decisions, how to deal with it (with this trauma), through the development of awareness, does a person come to maturity in this world. And pain is a symptom of growth, it is a signal that there is a chance to grow up. But at the same time, there is always your choice and your responsibility for what you do with this pain and where you decide to go:

right, left

or straight?