Joe & The Marriage Counsellor

BLOGGING ABOUT WHATEVER

ENTRY - 17

TITLE: "Joe & The Marriage Counsellor"

AUTHOR: J. William Bell

DATE POSTED: 2025-11-27

In some previous posts I've mentioned my friend Joe (obviously not his real name; and once you become more familiar with his words, you'll understand why I've set up a little fence of anonymity between him and everybody else). After having a few chats with Joe, I convinced him that I should tell his story about his less-than-helpful session with a marriage counsellor; and that it would be best if we kept this recollection as close to his own words as possible. So, brace yourself! Joe doesn't pull his punches when he has to remember something unhappy, but I promise you that he will be honest within his words (and yes, a certain amount of effort will be made to keep the identities of all parties involved anonymous).

JOE & THE MARRIAGE COUNSELLOUR

(in Joe's own words)

To begin with, we need to give this shrink a memorable alias. I'll be referring to her as Dr. Dummbrawd, and I wish she really had been a dumb broad, it would've made it easier for me to ignore her almost-bad advice, and convince my ex-Wife that we needed to see somebody else.

The Doc had been a medical doctor before she had switched careers and gone into psychiatry, so obviously she did have some brains; unfortunately, she'd filled up her brain with a lot of man-hating garbage. Also, she favoured a very political-left leaning perspective of reality. If I had been a little more skeptical, less trusting, and less of a basket case myself; due to being a victim of female-on-male spousal abuse; I would've figured out right away that Dr. Dummbrawd was not going to help me and the ex-Missus identify the problems in our marriage, then help us find practical solutions to deal with them. Instead, the Doc was going to escalate the conflict so that one of us would snap and then begin the divorce process. In the present day, as of the time that Jim is writing this down, She has been retired for a few years now, and I thank God for that; her potential to cause damage is now just limited to her circles of friends, relatives, and acquaintances.

During the session where I wished I'd realized that Doc Dummbrawd was up to no good; I pointed out to her that a clear identification of the abuser and the victim-of-abuser in a dysfunctional relationship was not always obvious; and that sometimes, yes, the best and only reasonable option to conflict resolution is to actually engage in the conflict. I was partially aware that prior to this one-on-one session we were having, she'd had plenty more one-on-one sessions with my figuratively-backstabbing ex-Wife, whose favourite complaint/sob-story/hobby was to make me look like an unreasonable monster! So I knew that I was going to have to make a case in defense of myself to someone who had been given plenty of half-truths and exaggerations to build up a unfriendly and unsympathetic bias with.

I decided to use William Shakespeare's play: THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, as a point of reference to my line of thinking. Dummbrawd immediately jumped to the conclusion that SHREW is a story that justifies spousal abuse. I then had to point out to her that in that story, the ironical male-romantic-lead/anti-hero: Petruccio, chose of his own free will to marry Katherine: The tragic female-romantic-lead/demi-antagonist. Petruccio was well aware of Katherine's reputation for being disrespectful, combatitive, selfish and stubborn; but, he also decided that he was brave enough and tough enough to re-educate a deffective bride (also; Baptista, Katherine's father; was offering up a very generous dowry for the marriage). I further pointed out that one of the many causes to Katherine's unpleasant character might be attributed to the absence of a Mommy. In the story, Baptista has two grown daughters who are of marriageable age; but his wife/mother of these daughters is absent. We; the audience, do not know if Mrs. Baptista died when the daughters were young, and therefore were raised as spoiled brats; or, we just don't know if Mrs. Baptista just decided one day to abandon her husband and daughters, thus unintentionally inspiring the daughters to indulge in disrespectul behaviours and attitudes. Either way, Mommy's absence helps to explain why one of the daughers is a shrewish woman, while the other is a conniving schemer who chooses to ignore all traditions regarding courtship and marriage in order to elope with a young doctor; and then expect her father to just forgive her and forget about it.

Yes, throughout the courtship, wedding, and early days of the marriage; Petruccio is aggressive, relentless, counter-combatitive, and nasty to Katherine; but, this is a dynamic which existed in their relationship because she started it; and Katherine had no intention of making peace with her husband until she realized that she was no longer under her father's protection; and the man who did have control over her access to food and sleep was not as easy to frighten off or abuse as her dear old Daddy.

I then pointed out to Doc Dummbrawd that what happens next in the story is dependant upon what the audience chooses to interpret (Bill Shakes was a clever writer, after all). It can be interpreted by the audience that Katherine re-programs herself to be a better wife and woman because she prefers to be rewarded rather than punished (and Dummbrawd then pointed out to me that this interpretation could be seen as an endorsement for torture/pavlovian conditioning and/or stockholm syndrome). The other audience interpretation is that Katherine realizes she has to enhance her shrewish tendencies with subtlety; let her husband win the big fights, while she sneakily wins the small fights that he is too simple-minded to notice. She even publicly scolds her sister and another newlywed woman for not showing their husbands the respect they deserve, while in public.

Dummbrawd's diploma-idiot understanding of what I was trying to explain to her is that changing the relationship dynamic so that abuse doesn't happen is not being done in this story. The second audience interpretation proposes that the patterns of abuse just change enough that the abuse might be harder to detect. I then tried and failed to explain to her that sometimes the only form of mercy you can show to somebody who is naturally aggressive is to soften/pull your hopefully figurative punch (only now, when I'm looking at this from far away do I realize that Dummbrawd was somebody who doesn't believe aggression can be a part of someone's natural personality; She favoured the argument that all natures are the byproduct of education/training).

I then tried using another story to explain to Dummbrawd why I treated my ex-Wife they way I did. It was an old Japanese Folktale that some folks call: THE BRIDE AND THE BEAR.

I'll try to sum it up here as short and as simple as possible:

- Man and Woman get married.

- Husband has to to fight in a war. Survives war, comes home full of mental and spiritual damage. Wife is now frightened of Husband, and doesn't know how to take care of him.

- Wife consults with the Village's Wise Old Woman (who we'll just call WOW).

- WOW tells Wife that there is an injured Bear up in a mountain cave. Everyday, until the Bear is healed, Wife must go feed the Bear and give him medicine, but she must not leave until she can confirm that the food is eaten and the medicine is taken.

- For many days, Wife has to fearlessly coax and verbally shame Bear until the Bear complies. The Bear eventually does.

- The Bear heals up, and leaves. Wife returns to WOW, and WOW tells her to deal with her disturbed Husband the same way she dealt with The Bear.

Dummbrawd totally missed the moral of the story. Instead of realizing that when somebody is married to a disturbed spouse; and yes, I was; the non-disturbed person has to be patient and fearlessly persistent with their spouse until they heal... Dumbrawd decided to take the events of the story and re-write them with questions like this:

- Is the Bride really helping The Bear if she verbally threatens and abuses him?

- Is the Bride doing the right thing by going into the cave and using physical violence to get compliance from the Bear?

- Can the Bride get the results she's looking for by only using non-threatening language with the Bear?

After she did that, I realized that she was not going to be very helpful. There are too many people who, when they favour the political left, completley ignore symbolism, metaphor and allegory in old fables and classic media. They want to revise everything so that it easily fits into whatever narrow pseudo-philosophy/religion they practice.

The happiest session I ever had with Dr. Dummbrawd was the last session. It barely was a session. I just showed up long enough to let her know that my Ex and I had unnofficially begun the divorce proceedings, and that her services were no longer required. I marched out her office; and with every step, I felt my inner-peace increase, and that I was now having a reunion with a long-lost and beloved freedom.

(This concludes Joe's words)

I was able to sell Joe on the idea of letting me put his story into my blog because; I believed it might help him unload some old pain.

Excelsior!