CSotD: Yes, m’love
Skip to comments
I have a daughter-in-law who is a psychology professor and to whom I periodically send good shrink toons that she can use to liven up lectures or that may simply give her a laff. But I've told her she has to keep track of Pros & Cons on her own because it's so consistently funny and insightful on the topic.
Case in point. This is really funny, but in a way that makes my stomach hurt.
You know right from the start that, if Dr. Peel doesn't do exactly what this woman expects of him, the couple won't be back. It's reasonable that the search for a marriage counselor needs to turn up someone both parties can trust and get along with, but it's also almost inevitable that each of them is looking for an expert who will say, "You're absolutely right in every regard. Your partner needs to straighten up and get with the program."
I've never heard a statistic of how many times, on average, people go to a particular marriage counselor, but the shop-around factor must be huge, though I suppose it is mitigated by passive-aggressive partners who agree on a counselor and then simply shut down and refuse to be part of the process.
Confucius said, "I have not yet seen one who could perceive his faults and inwardly accuse himself," which you might possibly want to render in needlepoint if you have any marriage counselors on your gift list, but I'm sure Master K'ung meant "sincerely" and not because of a spouse who relentlessly drilled the concept home.
Mind you, aggressive control freaks are simply the least subtle of the species. There are all sorts of ways of getting someone to do things your way.
The other point worth noting is that Kieran Meehan had to use a woman to make the joke work. The world is full of aggressive male control freaks, but their style of aggression is so blatant that there's no potential for humor in it. In fact, yesterday's strip showed the more nuanced element:
And it seems that the discussion of "mean girls" has veered away from the original topic of toxic social pressure, and placed these bullies into the same category as Gordon Gekko: The villain we hiss and boo while, at the same time, admire and wish we were more like.
It appears to center on a mistaken concept of what it means to be assertive. It's not unlike the person who wants to learn martial arts so he can beat people up. If you really master martial arts, you don't ever have to beat anybody up (despite what you saw every week in the last seven minutes of Kung Fu).
Ditto with being assertive. The alternative to being a victim is not being a bully. The alternative to being a victim is not being a victim.
But I see our time is about up. We can talk about this more next week.
Meanwhile, here's a film on the topic that might be helpful in understanding how each side can contribute to this problem:
Comments
Comments are closed.