My life is great. I have an interesting and exciting job in a field I love, I have the tightest, sweetest group of friends in the world, I’ve just about finished knitting my first sweater, and I have a boyfriend of two years who still makes my heart flutter when I see him walk into a room. In March I’m running my second triathlon.

The boy and I are moving toward marriage, and there’s one issue. He worries that my happiness is all a sham. Because in contrast to how much my shit is together today, the first 20 years or so (I’m 25) were rough. When I was nine, I was raped. Both of my parents are alcoholics. Two close friends committed suicide, and I had a long-term somewhat abusive relationship. My brother died after a long illness with me as his primary caretaker. To the boyfriend, the totality of the horror is so vast and so huge that he believes that deep down, there remains some torment that will come bubbling up when we least expect it. To me, human resilience and my coping skills are things of wonder.

Before we commit to each other — and to a potential family — he’d really like me to get therapy. I think I’m the one who can judge my happiness, and the idea of sitting, talking about the past just makes me weary. I won’t pretend it hasn’t taken a lot of work and emotional energy to create the life I want, and the idea of giving up some piece of it (time is precious) to do this makes me angry. I’ve offered to go to couples counselling because it sounds to me like HE is having a hard time getting his head — and heart — around my past, and I know it can take a toll. I have had short-term therapy after the aforementioned deaths, and for me, it wasn’t nearly as useful as drawing on my extensive and warm social support system. I don’t pretend these things never happened, I write in my journal, and I live my life.

He won’t force the issue, and thinks couples counselling is a good idea. But there’s a sliver of doubt here, too. Could he be right? Sars, do you think it is possible for me to actually be happy, or might I be fooling myself along with everyone around me?

Happy, Dammit, Happy

I don’t think you’re fooling yourself, necessarily, but I do wonder why the idea of going to a counselling session or two, just to see what it does for you, makes you “angry.”

The thing is, you’re both “right,” to my mind. You’re right to maintain that everyone deals with adversity in different ways, and your boyfriend shouldn’t assume that you’re going to bust out with PTSD; your boyfriend’s right to have concerns long-term if you’re starting a family together vis-a-vis your kids and the parental modelling you had.

And if you’re planning to get married, you’ll have to compromise on stuff like this anyway — and, probably, get pre-marital counselling to make sure you’re both on the same page with the big stuff like children and finances and blah bling blah. So, why not just see a therapist for a few sessions, on your own, and see what it’s like? It can’t hurt. If you try it and it’s not doing anything for you, well, question answered.

If it’s not useful to you, it’s not, but getting defensive about your coping style — which is, a little bit, what you’re doing — isn’t going to allay his concerns. It’s two or three hours out of your life, and you’ll probably waste more time resisting it than you would going to check it out. Just saying.

[7/1/05]

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