Strength

In the past several days I have answered a myriad of questionnaires about myself in the interests of having my lovely psychologist understand me. In the second session today, she waded through all the answered questionnaires I brought along at her request and this led to further questions. She concluded the session by noting that I was more complex than she had originally thought.

I laughed. It most certainly isn’t the first time in my life that I have been called “complex” or “complicated” but she assured me that she loved complex and found me “interesting”. Quite honestly, if she were not my psychologist we could be great friends. She dresses in an incredibly exotic way in long, flowy dresses, bright colours and Indian style silver jewellery. She has acrylic nails painted bright red and all in all she strikes me as wonderfully colourful and complex herself.

Some matters were, however, already crystal clear in her mind. It was my nature to be demur ever since I was a wee small girl. I exhibited “self sacrificing” qualities and put other’s needs ahead of my own. She saw all that quite clearly, she said.

An important matter that she needed an answer to was what I hoped to gain from our time together and I told her that I was currently in a transitional stage of my life. A nurturer by nature, my family needed less of me. Sure, there was still plenty to do but I wasn’t run off my feet any longer and the time had come when I had the opportunity to achieve some things just for me.

I hoped to come out of the sessions feeling comfortable with doing some things just for myself; not backing down from my own desires the first time I smelled my husband’s ambivalence or the first time it appeared that my choices might in any way cramp the style of other people in my life, or the first time I lost my nerve.

I told her, for example, that I was disappointed that I wasn’t going to be visiting my daughter in the UK shortly as previously planned. When my husband had not encouraged me in my plans to do so on my own, neither giving his blessing nor saying “no”, I had simply backed away from the plan altogether.

“I want to help you to be harder on yourself in those situations from now on. If it is something that you really want, then there are ways to make it happen. But, what hurdles do we have to get over? Would you feel guilty to get your own way?”

I confess I would. If something does not come to me openly and from the heart, I don’t want it. But, perhaps that is the kind of thinking that I must change; pushing forward to express what I want and how important something is to me.

Submissive women are very inclined to be compassionate, or so it seems to me. It is our nature or mine anyway, to be forgiving; to accept that we are all flawed in some way, that we make mistakes and that sometimes we are hurt unwittingly. We are givers, not takers and we want to please. We want our loved ones to be happy and we feel a strong bond to those special people in our lives. When we make mistakes ourselves we want to mend that net; to give our heartfelt apology and reunite.

Without going into details, take it from me that I have gone the extra mile many times to see things from other’s points of view and to accept what is really unacceptable. Only once or twice have I drawn the line with someone else’s behaviour towards me – completely unacceptable and unforgivable, even to me.

There have been moments when my husband has hurt me and he has asked me to explore his motives. Had he meant to hurt me? No, he certainly had not. But, what if someone acted towards me in a very hurtful way in full knowledge that his or her behaviour would hurt me deeply? What if the behaviour could be interpreted as callous or selfish? What if the behaviour broke the seal of trust between us?

It is my strongest inclination to want to forgive and to demonstrate my compassion by accepting behaviour that in most peoples’ eyes is unforgivable. It is much more comfortable for me to do so. To not do this would leave me feeling for the rest of my life that if I could have bent just a little more, I might have saved something that was very precious. Trees do topple over in fierce winds but not the strongest trees. They hold firm against the vagaries of nature.

As I contemplate my natural inclinations, I pause to wonder. Perhaps, I have not been weak at all but too strong for my own good.