Others may have Ann and Abby, Dr. Laura and John Gray,but we've got
the sharpest shooter of them all: the renowned therapist Frank Pittman,
M.D. His brilliant, witty, and occasionally acerbic advice offers what
really counts: genuine wisdom.
DEAR DR. FRANK,
I'm a 32-year-old, manic-depressive male who has been on lithium
for the last six years. I've been steady, stable and, to all appearances,
quite normal all that time. A month ago I started seeing someone new. We
really got along great until she told me that she had looked in my
medicine cabinet on the first night that I'd cooked her dinner, and had
seen the lithium. She's upset because I didn't tell her about the lithium
right off the bat, and I'm upset that she violated my privacy. Even
worse, I feel she won't understand that I'm basically okay and, instead,
will see me as a damaged person--as distressed merchandise. How can I
negotiate this issue long term and short term?
Dear Basically O.K.,
Each of you is hoping this relationship will be the one, so of
course you are going to show yourself off at your best, and of course
she's going to snoop around to find out what skeletons you are hiding in
your medicine closet.
But before you can move forward with the relationship, you both
have to get over the idea that any person or any relationship is perfect.
Only then is it safe to reveal your imperfections and baggage. However,
it is not generally considered a good courtship technique to walk around
with a sign around your neck saying "BEWARE! MANIC DEPRESSIVE." This sort
of thing isn't relevant until you are confident that the relationship has
a future.
As my psychologist-daughter Ginger Pittman-Pistilli put it: "Until
we as a society agree to submit blood and urine samples and a
psychological profile before the first date, it is totally appropriate to
reserve the details of your psychiatric history, as you would the
intimacies of your sexual experiences or your fourth-grade report card,
for more personal relationships."
You must understand that courtship rituals are exercises in
fantasy--built on deceit and distraction, smoke and mirrors--while
relationships are exercises in honesty, tolerance, and the messiness of
reality. Your friend needs to know more about lithium and manic
depression before she reacts to the information. (I've always referred
people to the 1975 book Moodswing by R.R. Fieve.) Above all she needs to
know more about you and what you have been through to become the person
whose medicine closet fascinates her so. Reveal your secret shames and
the traumas you've faced up until now.
She may be looking for a fantasy rather than a relationship with a
real guy. You might be a lot more real than she's willing to bargain for.
But if she's willing, the genuine relationship can now begin.
DEAR DR. FRANK,
My husband and I are both on our second marriages. When we married
three years ago, I had been widowed for ten years, and my new husband's
wife had died the year before. He seemed to be at peace with her death,
but his daughter was not; she refused to go to our wedding and, in the
last three years, has almost totally broken off contact with our new
family. We've tried repeatedly to reach out to her, but she just ignores
our overtures. I see how this hurts my husband so much. Any
suggestions?
Dear Snubbed Stepmother,
Obviously your husband felt more in need of a wife than his
daughter felt in need of a stepmother. Your stepdaughter may have felt
that her father was "at peace" too quickly with her mother's death and
that his remarriage was disrespectful of her. He did not bring you into
the bereaved family he shared with his motherless children; instead, he
created a new family with you and then invited his daughter in, and she
must have felt that she simply didn't have a place in her father's new
family.
You talk of "us" reaching out and "our" overtures. You give me no
reason to believe you are part of the issue, and I advise you to make
that assumption unless you know or hear otherwise. Your job is to be
friendly and to get out of the way of your stepdaughter's relationship
with her only parent. Your husband needs to share at least some of her
mourning for her mother--without you around.
I am particularly pained that you wrote this letter rather than
your husband. Please pass this paragraph on to your husband from
me:
I assume your daughter is not offended by your new wife personally
but is offended by your remarriage. So let me take a wild guess here
(based upon a few thousand such situations in my practice and a few in my
own family). Let me first assume your late wife was the psychological
parent. Let me then assume you never developed comparable sensitivity to
the emotional lives of your children, and that you now expect your new
wife to take over that function. And finally let me assume your daughter
is holding out for a personal relationship with her only remaining
parent. I may be way off base, but if my guess feels right to you, then
take your daughter out for dinner--alone--and talk about her mother. Cry
together, recall the good feelings and the bad. Ask her how you've been
as a father, husband and widower. Repeat this as often as necessary for
as long as it takes. Once you and your daughter are comfortably close,
ask her if you can invite your new wife to join the two of you on one of
your next excursions.
Tags:
abby,
advice,
courtship,
daughter ginger,
distressed merchandise,
dr frank,
dr laura,
first date,
frank pittman,
genuine wisdom,
imperfections,
lithium,
manic depressive,
medicine cabinet,
medicine closet,
psychiatric history,
right off the bat,
skeletons,
urine samples
