Neither one of you wants to let the other down, but we can't hide the things that bother us from the ones we love for very long. The old saying, "communication is the key to a successful marriage,' there's a reason why it's a cliché.”
Amen to that! Now Lois and Clark should just search for a way to start talking. Maybe Lois could start?
Yesterday I read an article by a therapist who treats women suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome because they have been raped. The therapist wrote that to us humans, being able to trust other people is absolutely essential if we are going to be able to trust and deal with the world we live in. If another person betrays us by deliberately harming us, we may lose our trust in the entire world. But this lack of trust in the world as such is totally debilitating for us. We can't live in the world if we can't trust it. We desperately search for a way to reaffirm our trust in the world, and to make ourselves believe that the world is a livable place.
A common strategy, the therapist wrote, is to place the blame for what happened on oneself. If other people are deliberately trying to harm me, I may be totally unable to defend myself. I am at the evil people's mercy. I am going to die. But if I myself am responsible for what happened, if it truly was my fault, then I can change my own behaviour and protect and defend myself that way. If it was my fault that it happened, then I must find out what I did wrong, and then I must make sure that I never make the same mistake again.
And then, of course, if things still go wrong, I must find out what I did wrong this time, and then I must change my ways all over again. I must readjust and readjust, always placing the blame for what happened on myself. I must realize that as soon as bad things happen I'm in the wrong, and I must change.
What a horribly exhausting, self-demeaning, debilitating strategy. And yet it may be the only strategy available, if the alternative is to believe that the whole world is dark, unpredictable and full of ill will.
But if the victim is full of self-recrimination, then he or she must also believe that others, too, will blame him or her for what has happened to him or her. Self-recimination is a heavy enough burden, but dealing with the contempt or belittling compassion of others may be just too much. The person who blames himself will feel inferior to others, and therefore he will often be angry or short-tempered in his relationships with others.
Clark must find a way to stop blaming himself for the horrible things that happened to him. And Lois and Clark both need to find the courage to start opening up to one another, regardless of the terrible risks to their fragile self-images that this may entail.
Ann
