By Diana Holbourn
Becky and Other Students Discuss Psychopaths, Wife Beaters, Lead Poisoning Scandals and Other Depressing Things, but Also Have a Laugh
This series accompanies the books about what Becky does at university and afterwards, which you can find out more about on my author website. (The online series is in draft form.)
After a while, the conversation got more serious again, as one of the students said, "That stuff we were talking about before about people being different from the way you might think they are at first reminds me of something I heard on the radio, where someone - I think it might have been a divorce lawyer, but I can't quite remember now, - was talking about how it's possible to predict which couples who are just about to get married will end up getting divorced. She said some people marry when they don't know all that much about each other at all, so they can't really know enough about whether they're compatible enough with each other to really know it's a good idea to get married. She said some of them don't even know each other's middle names! ... Mind you, when I heard her say that, I thought, 'You really think that's a problem, do you? Why would people want to ask their boyfriends and girlfriends what their middle names are? I mean, they're often not really something their owners want to boast about, are they!'"
The student telling the others that smiled as she said for fun, "Just imagine if there was a dating advice website, and there was a list of questions they said were romantic questions to ask people on a first date, and they were things like, 'What's your middle name?' 'What was the most embarrassing nickname you've ever had?' 'Are there any words you can remember mispronouncing when you were little?' 'Have you got any bad habits?' 'What are the worst disease symptoms you ever had?' 'What's the biggest mistake you ever made?' 'What was the subject you were worst at at school?'"
The students laughed. Then the one who'd been talking said, "Actually though, this divorce lawyer or whatever she was said another thing that sounded more serious, like that some people marry, not knowing how the person they're marrying likes to handle money, - you know, whether they like to save most of it, or spend it all at once if they can, or whatever. You know, it could cause problems if two people like to do opposite things with it."
One of the others said, "I wonder what makes some couples think it's worth marrying each other if they don't know each other well enough to know if they're really going to get on with each other. I wonder if sometimes, it's all to do with doing things that make feelings keep getting stronger, - you know, like sometimes if they give each other a lot of affection and have sex that they enjoy, and it makes them feel fonder and fonder of each other, till each one feels as if they want to be with the other person forever, because they imagine things will always be the same way.
"But because they're with each other mostly because of the good feelings they get when they're with them, then when the feelings fade - since I think most loving feelings fade after a while, - they might lose interest in being with the other person quite a bit, especially if because they're not really all that compatible, they start having more and more arguments about things, like, say, if they have kids, and one parent thinks kids need strict discipline, and the other one hates the way they treat them because they think they're being too hard on them, or say if one person assumed they'd always have as much sex as they had at first, but the other person isn't so interested once the first feelings they had die down, so they have arguments over that. Or it could be any number of other things.
"I suppose that even if a couple's compatible, they still might get dissatisfied when the loving feelings die down, since they might start craving the excitement they got when they were first in love, so they might start looking around for other people they could start relationships with, to revive those feelings.
"But if a couple mostly wants to stay together at first because of their strong feelings for each other, that they just imagine they'll always have, then maybe they'll be even more likely to want new relationships after a while, since what if the more time they spend with each other once the feelings start dying down, the more things they find out they're unhappy about with the other person? I wonder if that kind of thing's one reason the divorce rate's so high - you know, if people get romantic early on in a relationship, so strong feelings get stirred up between them that make them feel high, and they just assume they'll always feel them, so they get married, not thinking about how they'll get on once they have to spend a lot of time together doing boring things like housework instead of spending most of their time together doing fun things, and they have to worry about paying bills and who's spending what, and whether one's spending too much, and things like that, that could start making people bored or annoyed with each other.
"You know, it just seems to me that it would make more sense to find out what people are really like before getting romantic with them. I mean, couples will probably often have disagreements no matter what; but it's got to help a lot if they at least agree with each other about the really big things, like how to treat any children they have, and whether the wife ought to go out to work when the children are little, and that kind of thing. I mean, imagine marrying someone, and only finding out afterwards that they, say, expected you to do all the housework every day, and didn't see why they should ever help! You might even feel like divorcing them right then and there on the spot!"
The students smiled, and then another one of them said, "I think we're going to be studying the reasons why people get divorced later in the course. Or you could google the reasons, if you really want to know."
The one who'd been talking before said, "Maybe I will. I mean, I'm not saying I think the only reason, or even the main reason why people get divorced is that thing about stirring up strong feelings for each other by getting all romantic before really knowing each other well, so people can marry people they turn out not to have known enough about to have been sure a relationship with them would last. I'm just wondering if it's one reason for divorce, that maybe isn't uncommon.
"Anyway, maybe it's just me, but I don't like the way people are expected to get romantic with each other almost right from when they start dating, when they can't know each other very well at all. Last year there was this girl on my corridor, and we met the day after I moved in, and we got chatting, and we talked for nearly three hours. Then we met a couple of days later and got chatting again, and we were talking for quite a long time again. She was telling me all about what she'd done in her life and things.
"She seemed to be nice and friendly and caring. But even after we'd chatted for hours, I still thought I'd have to get to know her some more before I could be sure. She still seems nice now, all this time later; but you know how it is: Some people who start off seeming nice turn out to have quick tempers, or you might find out they've been spreading nasty rumours about you one day, or they might play loud music sometimes in the early hours of the morning when you're trying to get to sleep because you've got an early lecture the next day, and they just get annoyed with you when you ask if they'll turn it down, and turn it up instead, or all kinds of other things. She doesn't seem to be like that at all; but I'm just talking about people in general.
"But anyway, a few days after I'd met this girl, when we'd spent hours chatting to each other, I thought, 'I still don't think I know her all that well, but if she was a man, and we'd come across each other on a dating site, and the times we've spent chatting were actually dates we'd been on together, maybe we'd be expected to be getting romantic with each other by now, when we still hardly know each other, it seems to me!'
"There was this man on my corridor who I still see sometimes, who's been out with someone he met here a couple of times, and he was asking me and some other people for advice the other day. He said they'd got on really well, and she'd touched him quite a bit, and he was wondering when it would be best to kiss her. He said he felt awkward and a bit nervous about it, and he wanted it to seem romantic, and not mess it up, and he was asking us what we thought about when it would be best to do it and how to go about it. Then he said, 'I think I'll just kiss her quickly at the beginning or the end of the next date to get it over with.' I thought, 'Kissing shouldn't be something you do because you think you ought to, or to get it over with! It should be something you do because you want to!'
"But someone said they would think things were going too slowly if there hadn't been any kissing by the third date. But someone else said she would feel really awkward if someone started kissing her too soon, as if she would feel under pressure to get physical before she wanted to; and she said it would make her jump and pull away if they did it suddenly when she wasn't expecting it. She said that happened once.
"It just seems a shame to me that there seems to be all this pressure on people to do what's expected, such as kissing by a certain time, instead of things being more natural. I wonder if society would be healthier if everyone took things a lot more slowly when they're dating, so they don't get romantic feelings stirred up really early by doing physical things with people who seem nice at first, only to end up losing interest in them when they know them better, or to get upset when the other person loses interest.
"There's someone else here who was talking to me not that long ago, and she said, 'Something horrible happened last night!' And she told me about a friend of hers who phoned her in the middle of the night, really upset, because someone she'd started going out with about a month earlier had dumped her. She said they hadn't got that romantic with each other till just a few days earlier, but after that, this man seemed to lose enthusiasm, since whenever she tried to arrange another date or talk to him, he didn't seem that interested, and then she asked him what the problem was, and he said he didn't think they made a good match.
"So now she thinks he was just a playa, one of these men who tells women they're attracted to them and that they look good, and all kinds of flattering things like that, to make them think they're starting a good relationship with them, so they're more likely to go to bed with them; but then they move on to the next person after they have, as if it's all a game to them, where trying to get a woman to go to bed with them is a challenge, and it's a conquest when they succeed, that boosts their ego, and they want as many as possible. Actually, the person who was telling me what happened to her friend told me that she herself had been warned by a few men who thought she seemed a bit gullible and naive that she needed to be careful when she was dating, since quite a few men just want to get romantic with women they're dating and go to bed with them a few times, and then move on to the next one. That's just what some men do, not caring about how it affects any of the women they dump, it seems.
"She said men she's dated have complimented her by saying she's good-looking, fun to be around, cheerful, and comes across as successful in life. But she's started wondering if they've just been flattering her because they just think that'll make it easier for them to get her into bed with them.
"Anyway, the compliments prove they don't know her very well, because she definitely has got good things going for her, and she can be a lot of fun to be with, but she's actually a great big excitable bundle of neuroses, getting all stirred up with anxiety and jealousy and anger and things at the slightest provocation; so any man who thought she was going to be good to be in a relationship with long-term might have more problems than most people would. ... Actually, I feel a bit disloyal saying that about her, because I do like her; it's just that it fits in with this thing about getting into relationships with people you later find out you're not compatible with."
One student said, "This conversation's getting a bit heavy again! I think I need to get another drink and some more food! Yeah, I know it hasn't been long since I had the last lot. But I still think I need more now."
Several of them got more as well.
When they'd sat back down with their refreshments, one said for a laugh, "I made a joke about falling in love on a forum once. I said, 'I'm thinking of falling in love with someone on this board. I haven't decided whether to yet, since I've hardly read any of his posts. But I'm planning to read a lot more soon. My decision as to whether to fall in love with him will depend on an extensive scientific and mathematical analysis of them. I'm going to rate each one on a scale, giving it a number from -5 to +5, depending on how much I like or dislike what it says. Then, I'll do a comprehensive calculation. Here's how:
"'I'll examine all the numbers, and every -5 rating will cancel out a +5 rating. Every -4 rating will cancel out a +4 one. After I've calculated how many of the numbers 4 and 5 cancel each other out, I'll count how many of the remaining 4 and 5 numbers remain. If there are 1.5 times as many -5s as +5s, or 2.5 times as many -4s as +4s, I'll know not to fall in love with him. Actually, there will almost certainly have to be at least 4 times as many +5s as -5s for me to still be interested. If, on the other hand, there are 4.7 times as many +4s as minus 5s, or thereabouts, I'll still consider the matter, since a much larger number of +4s than -5s will be promising, even though -5s will be the worst. There will have to be only few -5s though for me to still be tempted.'
"I went on and on like that for a while, pretending I was going to make complex calculations before deciding whether to fall in love with this person, and that I'd only fall in love with him if they came out in his favour.
"There are two people on that forum in particular who I've had unfriendly disputes with. Well, there are more, but I'll call those two Smut-Hound and Lowbrow Dog.
"When I'd put my joke post about deciding whether to fall in love with this man on the board, someone asked me a joke question, saying, 'Is it Smut-Hound or Lowbrow Dog?'
"I joked, 'Actually it's both. I want them to be one person; so I'm going to send my special robotic hunter-surgeon out to track them both down and capture them, and then meld them into one person, which won't hurt. Then we'll get an apparently new member called Lowbrow-Smut-Hound-Dog who'll be a mixture of the two.'"
The student who'd told the others about the joke they'd made about the meaning of a forum moderator's name before said, 'I made some more jokes about moderators and the forum rules on that forum I was on:
"There are a couple of people I found so irritating I put them on my ignore list. So when they posted in threads, instead of their posts being displayed, the forum would just display a message each time saying their post was hidden because they were on my ignore list, but that I could read it if I liked. But the forum would still send me an email when one of them posted in the thread, that quoted what they said. So I started a thread asking if that could be changed, so I'd only get emails quoting the people whose posts I was interested in reading. I'll call the people I put on my ignore list Animal and Bluebottle, although those aren't their real usernames.
"The thread I started was partly just light-hearted, where I made some jokes. After I explained about the emails, I said, 'This is most disgruntling! A couple of weeks ago or so, I put Bluebottle on my ignore list. As I said at the time, it was a marvellous experience that gave me a high 152 times more powerful than eating chocolate does. I considered putting the entire board on ignore one by one over the next few weeks to re-create the wonderful dopamine rush I got several times. I remember saying at the time, "Next time I'm in the mood for a bit of comfort eating, I think I'll put someone on my ignore list instead. Less fattening. Perhaps if I systematically put the whole forum on ignore, I'll go around in a constant state of joyous rapture and won't need chocolate for a month!"
"'I've reconsidered that now for the time being, particularly since I put Animal on my ignore list next, and disappointingly didn't get the same high. In fact, the experience wasn't even as good as eating one single square of chocolate, for some reason.'
"Anyway, there didn't seem to be a solution to the problem I brought up - I mean the one about the emails. but someone suggested I could unsubscribe from the threads the people on my ignore list posted in so I wouldn't get emails quoting what they said.
"I joked, 'Unsubscribing from the threads they're posting in might be a bit drastic. It's not as if they're ragingly offensive - just too boorish and dull for me to lower myself to communicate with. People need a bit more fire in their belly before I'll want to talk to them. But then, if people have too much, I'll have to put them on my ignore list as well from now on, because I won't like that either. People have to have just the right amount - an amount that could probably be scientifically measured in a laboratory, and of course should be, as a special favour to me, as a matter of priority; then everyone else's posts can be analysed in the same laboratory for me, to see if they have the correct amount, and if they don't, I can put the posters on my ignore list without having to find out by trial and error (in other words talking to them) whether I should first.'
"Someone butted into the thread to ask why people were talking rubbish in it, mostly meaning me. I joked, 'It's because there's a new rule that says that every Monday, people have to talk about who's on their ignore lists, as a healthy exercise in openness and honesty. It's a government directive.'
"This person played along, asking me, 'So what do we do on Tuesdays?'
"There was someone who'd recently been banned, who I'll call Primitive Cop. I joked, 'The government has decreed that Tuesday is the day for talking about who should be banned and who's just been banned. That means that from now on, no one's allowed to post in that thread about Primitive Cop being banned except on Tuesdays.'
"The person I was talking to quipped, 'Wow, so I have to follow rules now.'
"I joked, 'Yep, and they're very strict. If anyone dares to post in the thread about Primitive Cop being banned on any day but Tuesday from now on, the government have decreed that the moderators have a duty to permanently ban them from the forum straightaway. If they don't, they will be punished for disobeying government orders by being declared non-citizens, and deported permanently to a little uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Nothing to do with me. This is a government order.
"'Of course, I'm exempted from the rule about banning, since I started that thread. So I can post in it whenever I like. But people will have to wait till the following Tuesday if they want to reply.'
"The person I was talking to joked, 'I say let's ban every day except Tuesday to counter the government's move.'
"I joked, 'You mean so we'd have no choice but to call every day Tuesday? Or do you mean we should alter the laws of the universe so we're in constant darkness most of the time because the only day we ever get is Tuesday because the rest of the days have been banned, so all the rest of the week turns into Tuesday night?
"'Yikes! I'm not sure I like that idea! But I like the principle - yeah, let's rebel, and set up our own rules! We could have a rule that a moderator has to ban at least one person every single day except Tuesdays, and those not banned yet have to talk about it straightaway every time it happens. That would spite the government!
"'Still, as long as people were being banned for talking about people being banned, the government probably wouldn't mind. It would only be if the moderators refused to ban the ones who did that that the government would come down heavily and deport them to the uninhabited Pacific island forever.'
"When I'd put Animal on my ignore list a while before, I made a mock-pompous pronouncement for a laugh that said,
"'I have an announcement to make, which is of great magnitude, and of vital importance to the community here: I'm henceforth putting Animal on ignore. Told you it was important.
"'I'm going to have to put him on ignore, because as three quarters of the entire world knows, he is an ... well never mind about that for now; the other thing is that he has a thin veneer of sophistication that inevitably crumbles when subjected to the slightest scrutiny or provocation, to unmask an unpleasant nature; and I'm putting him on ignore so I can resist the temptation to display it to the world by unmasking it. I will restrict myself in future to merely doing so once or twice a year on special important ceremonial occasions as befits such a proceeding, perhaps on the Queen's birthday or something.
"'Then again, it might be best to do it much less than that, maybe only every four years or so, perhaps to coincide with the great ceremonial occasion of the lighting of the Olympic Torch or something. Oh no, that wouldn't be appropriate, would it, since that's supposed to be about unity and harmony. Or is it? Anyway, I think I'll have to do it at some other time.
"'OK, perhaps I'll only unmask it once a decade or every twelve years or something, maybe to coincide with that grand hour of celebration when the sun finally shines for more than five consecutive minutes around here. I haven't quite decided when it'll be. So Animal will have to remain in suspense. Anyway, he'll be on my ignore list the rest of the time.
"'There are another 71 people here I'd love to put on ignore, but I'll keep them off my list for a while longer, because their interactions with others are sometimes of anthropological interest.'
"(In reality, there weren't anywhere near that many people on the forum.) Anyway, I carried on,
"'Of course, Bluebottle's already on my ignore list, and probably will be for the next 70 years or so, due to my wish to shield myself from his bizarre voracious appetite for the kind of attention he can only get by being irritating and abusive, and my lack of confidence that he will evolve during that time into something more fun and interesting. Of course, it is possible that he might. I mean, if he evolved a new hand, for example, that would make him interesting. I'd want to ask him all about it - for instance, whether it developed slowly or fast, how he felt while it was developing, such as whether he was worried or embarrassed or intrigued, or excited at the anticipation of being able to do more things at once, whether he made attempts to cover it up while it was growing to protect himself from the stares of the public, and that kind of thing. I'd want to talk to him then, so I'd take him off ignore. But the most reputable scientific textbooks say it would take about six billion years for someone to evolve a new hand. So I might have to keep him on my ignore list for a lot longer than 70 years before that happens.'"
The students giggled.
After a while, they settled down to talk seriously again, and one of them said, "The conversation we were having before about romantic relationships reminded me of something: I read that some psychologists think there are about five stages that marriages typically go through, starting off with people feeling really loving towards each other, and then with the marriage getting worse when they realise what their partner's really like from day to day, and then they'll sometimes divorce; or if they don't, they'll often start working towards improving the marriage, doing their best to work out what they can do to live with each other more happily.
"I read that at first, people can feel really good when they're with each other, since a lot of feel-good emotions can be stirred up that make them feel more energetic and alive, and they can feel really happy together, but unhappy when they're apart. And they might just assume things will be like that forever if they stay together for life. And they can feel sure they've got loads of things in common, because they might be pleased to find out they have similar music tastes and hobbies, and like going out to the same places, and things like that. And they might be able to laugh and feel relaxed and be themselves with each other, and that kind of thing, so they might be sure they're really compatible. They can be so happy, it can be easy for them to overlook the odd little thing they notice that they don't like, such as the odd bad habit they notice.
"But then a while after they marry, a disillusionment phase will set in, where they start noticing little things about the other one that annoy them, such as how untidy they are, and that they never want to bother clearing up after meals, or all kinds of other things like that. If they assumed the other person was just perfect for them before, they can feel really let down and fed up.
"And it gets worse, because then disagreements begin to build up, and the people in the couple realise they're not as compatible as they thought they were, and that even with the things they do have in common, they're not as good a match as they thought, since, for example, one person might want to go out and enjoy the hobbies they both have more often than the other one does, and spend more money on them than the other one would like them to; and they might have the same music tastes, but one might want the music way louder than the other one would like it; and there might be all kinds of problems like that, some of them more serious. So there might often be arguments, and each person might start thinking the other person just isn't like the one they married. It turns out they married someone they didn't know as well as they thought they did. That stage of marriage can last for years!
"And worse than that, while couples are still going through that phase, they're going to want to make a lot of important decisions, that it would be easier to make if they were feeling for each other and they had similar points of view instead of arguing all the time. They'll need to decide things like how to divide up the housework, who'll do the shopping and other tasks, whether and when to have children, how often to visit each other's parents or let them in the house, and all kinds of things like that.
"So they'll often argue. And that leads into the third stage of marriage, when couples can spend a lot of time in angry arguments, where each one does their best to try to convince the other one that they're right and the other one's wrong, getting really fed up that the other one keeps arguing instead of admitting they're wrong, and thinking it must be because they're spiteful, or they just want to be the one in control, and that kind of thing, while the other one might be thinking the same thing about them. So they each just want to win the arguments and make the other one change, instead of trying to work out solutions."
One of the students said, "Wow, if that's true, marriage sounds too scary for me to want to have anything to do with it!"
The one who'd been talking about the stages of marriage said, "Yeah! But maybe the better people really know each other before they marry, the less bad, and the shorter the argument phases will be. I remember talking to someone who said she and her husband hadn't had one single argument in their lives, and they'd always been happily married. They had two grown-up daughters, and they'd married young. So they'd been married for some time. So it seems that just shows it can be done."
One of the others grinned and said, "I heard someone make a joke once where he said he and his wife had only ever had one argument in their marriage; it started the day they married, and it was still going on!"
They giggled.
Then the one who'd been telling the others what they'd read about the stages of marriage said, "Anyway, What I read said that when couples have been arguing a lot for a while, quite a lot of them will decide they just can't live together and divorce, and others will resign themselves to living together, but feel unhappy for years, and try to have as little to do with each other as possible. But some will decide to do what they can to improve their marriages; and they can find the best years of their married lives can come after they've done that.
"So the fourth stage of marriage, for people who decide to move on to it, is when couples realise that no amount of arguing or pleading or threatening will change their partners to be more like the way they'd like them to be, and they decide to do their best to find ways to live with them as they are instead, with less drama. So they might search around for advice about improving marriages from family and friends, and maybe self-help books or counselling. And they might realise that they themselves aren't all that easy to live with, so they stop being so judgmental of some of their partner's faults, and become more forgiving when they argue, and more willing to try to understand things from the other person's point of view. And they start avoiding saying things they know will especially annoy their partner a lot of the time, and start apologising sometimes when they do say things that upset them. And they shrug some things off that they would have argued about before, because they decide it just isn't worth it. So arguments get less bad.
"Sometimes there will be phases where the marriage is more like it was in the earlier stages. But people don't have to worry that things will stay that way forever, because they can improve, since after all, they did before, so it's possible that they can be reassured that they can again.
"And then if the marriage does improve, it can move on to the fifth stage, according to this book I read, where people in married couples can start feeling some of the same feelings for their marriage partner that they did at first, and realise that they still do have some of the same qualities that made them fall in love with them in the first place. So they can start enjoying being with each other again, especially since the kids might be getting older and needing less attention by then, so they can spend more time with each other just relaxing or enjoying themselves.
"I know all that sounds gloomy. But I think I remember this information saying some people do miss out some of the stages. So I don't suppose people are just doomed to get mired in the bad ones for years and years."
Another one of the group grinned and joked, "... Or maybe that's just what they want us to think!"
One of them queried thoughtfully, "Do you think anyone would ever dare get married if everyone was warned that that was going to happen to them, say in school?"
Another student grinned and said, "Yeah, just imagine if a teacher stood in front of the class one day and said, 'Now today, children, I'm going to teach you all about how you're going to really mess up your marriages when you're older. That's just what grown-ups do, and there's no getting away from it! You're all going to want to divorce before you've been married even a few years!'"
They all giggled, and one joked, "Yeah, maybe they could have a lesson called Scary Class, where teachers would give them all the worst case scenarios about things that might happen to them, like saying that when they got old, they might well start losing their hearing, and falling over a lot and breaking bones; and before then, when they had children of their own, their kids were going to keep them up all night when they were babies with their crying, and then they would quite likely yell and scream when they didn't get their own way for the next sixteen years or more!"
One of the others said, "Wow, just imagine it! If the teachers made things sound really scary or depressing, some of the kids who'd thought they really didn't like school up until that moment might start saying, 'I don't want to grow up; I want to stay at school forever!'"
They chuckled.
Then the one who'd been talking about the stages of marriage they'd read about smiled and said, "Well hopefully if they did teach children about the things that can go wrong in marriages at school, they'd teach them strategies for handling arguments well at the same time, and that kind of thing! And it might be just as well if they taught them that no matter how infatuated with a person they might feel when they start having relationships, it won't necessarily mean they'll be happy with them forever, so people really ought to know each other pretty well before they marry.
"And I wonder if what someone said earlier is true, about getting physical with each other stirring up really nice feelings that can make people think they must be more suitable for each other than they really are, and that they'd be really good together for life or something, because they just assume things will be like that forever, when feelings really wear off after a while."
Another one of the students said, "Yeah. Actually, that thing about stirring up feelings that make people think they really want to be with whoever they're in a relationship with forever reminds me a bit of a short story I read. It wasn't about that kind of thing, but it could probably apply to any kind of emotion really, since it's partly about bad things that can end up happening when emotions get stirred up when it would be best if they weren't really. I was browsing a website that was full of inspirational stories, and one was about a little boy who once complained to his grandad that a friend of his had done something to him that was unfair, and he was feeling angry about it.
"His grandad said he'd tell him a story. He said that people had sometimes done really unfair things to him as well, and he'd been full of hate and anger after they happened. But he said he'd realised over the years that spending your days feeling angry and full of hate would just make life miserable, while the person who did the injustice might be going around feeling perfectly happy; so spending days with a mind full of hate was like taking poison yourself with the hope that your enemy would die of it.
"He said he'd struggled with feelings of hate and anger a lot in life; it was as if there were two wolves living inside him, one a good peaceful one that didn't do any harm and didn't take offence when someone said or did something it didn't like but they hadn't meant to be offensive, and would only fight when it was the right thing to do, and always in the appropriate way. But the other wolf was a quick-tempered one that would always be picking arguments with people for no good reason. It couldn't tell it was getting angry unfairly with people, because the anger was so strong it was stopping it from thinking straight, because it's hard to be thoughtful when anger's just making you want to react immediately. But the anger wasn't doing it any good, because it wasn't achieving anything good.
"The grandad said it sometimes wasn't easy to live with the two wolves inside him, because both of them would try to control him.
"The boy was really interested in what his grandad said, and asked him, 'Which one wins?'
His grandad said, 'The one I feed.'
"I think that partly means that the more you brood on bad feelings, instead of thinking about what would really be the best thing to do, the worse they can get, because brooding on them stirs them up. You know, if you started thinking about something you're annoyed about, I bet you'd find that the more you thought about how angry it was making you feel, the more angry you'd feel about it, because every angry thought you had would just make you feel worse.
"Hey Jessica, I wonder if something similar to that was going on with that woman on the forum you were talking about earlier, who said she'd been feeling really anxious all day, and upset by thinking about her parents saying things that upset her.
"I mean, the more you think about that kind of thing, chances are the more it'll upset you. Actually, I've been reading a book by a therapist who's worked with women who've been victims of domestic violence, and one thing he said was that people who've broken up with their violent partners can actually keep retraumatising themselves, when they fill their minds with self-criticism about why they got together with a man like they did, and thoughts about how horrible what he did was. You know, what happened in the first place was bad enough, but all the time they're agonising over it in the years after that, with the same upsetting thoughts running through their heads again and again, they're really stirring up the traumatised feelings again and again; it's what they're thinking day after day, and how their thoughts are making them feel, that's keeping all the upset going for as long as it does.
"I mean, don't get me wrong - I'm not saying I think people should just stop thinking about that kind of thing after a while and just get on with life, or that it's their own fault they feel bad after a while, or anything like that. You know, you hear people saying they're upset because some people around them say insensitive things like that they really ought to have got over what upset them by now; and that's not nice. I mean, you can't expect someone who's had something traumatic or really upsetting happen to them to get over it quickly at all! And people can't help the thoughts that come into their heads.
"But there might be ways to get over things more quickly than some people have ever heard of, and one reason is that we have got some control over whether thoughts stay in our heads, just being brooded on all the time.
"I'm just saying it seems it's best if people do their best to think of ways of moving past their problems, or get help to do that, since if they succeed, then I'd have thought upsetting thoughts about their problems will just start to fade away naturally, so they'll end up happier. I mean, I know it's bound to be a lot harder for some people to do that than others, especially because some upsetting things are much worse than others. But I think it's best if people try to move forward, especially because none of us knows how much time we've got left to live! I mean, wouldn't it be horrible to get some illness and to know you were going to die soon, and your health was too bad to do anything much, and then you started thinking of all the things you'd like to have done, and how you think you could have been happier, if only you'd made all the efforts you could to try and get your problems solved so you could live a higher-quality life!"
One of the group said, "Yes, but I don't suppose people spend ages brooding on their problems just because they feel like it; I mean, when people are really depressed or stressed, and that kind of thing, it's more difficult for them to think of things that'll solve their problems, because it's more difficult to sit down and try to work out what to do when you've got all that emotion crowding out thoughts that might actually give you good ideas about what to do."
The student who'd been talking before said, "Yes, I know; but making efforts to solve your problems could include going to a therapist who might be able to help. It's a shame there are ones out there who aren't much good, who people can go to for ages without their problems improving. At least some of them are good."
Jessica said, "Yes. When this woman on the forum talked about feeling really anxious and depressed and lonely, I wondered if her therapist could be doing her any good! That's partly why I wrote a message to her at first. But then it turned out she thought he was really good.
"Actually, another thing that made me realise that she isn't as nice and sweet as she seemed to be at first was something else she said, that just proves that first impressions aren't always right. Someone started a thread on the forum asking for help to stop feeling angry towards her mum, after she visited her family, and her drug-addicted brother punched her and yelled insults at her because he was enraged at her doing something he disapproved of, which certainly wasn't as bad as being violent like him, and her mum didn't care. She was worried that her anger was ruining her relationship with her mum.
"Some people said she'd be better off without a mum like that in her life, and it would be best if she kept her distance from her from then on, which was fair enough.
"But this woman who had the therapist she liked said, 'What my therapist lets me do with my anger is to sit in a chair, feet firmly on the ground, close my eyes, and visualise the person I harbour hate/anger/resentment towards, and use whatever ways imaginable to beat them up myself, to let off steam and get back at them, no matter how cruel or sadistic. To really focus on what I do with my body to beat them up and see how they react, not letting them fight back, but just have them be beaten. You think about how they look at you, and what they do. This exercise might feel a bit silly at first, but it does help with the pent-up anger; it's a safe way to let the rage out.'
"I don't know how healthy that kind of thing really is. I mean, I can imagine some people getting a lot of satisfaction from fantasising about doing that to their parents. But I don't know how long it would help them for before they decided they just had to do it again. And I didn't think it was likely to help the person who'd started the thread fix her relationship with her mum, which was what she was asking how to do! It doesn't exactly sound like a good conflict resolution technique, does it!
"And then someone started another thread, where they asked what to do about resentment, but they didn't say a word about the reasons why they felt resentful. This woman advised them to use the fantasy torture technique on whoever was bothering them, as if she thought it was such a good technique that everyone should try it. But I thought, 'For all you know, they might be resentful about something that's just trivial, like still being annoyed with their parents for buying their older brother nicer clothes and toys than the ones they got forty years ago and giving them to them when they were second-hand, because their brother had grown out of them or something! Imagine someone saying they were resentful about that, and someone else recommending that the solution for it was to sit back in a chair and fantasise about beating their parents up!"
The students chuckled. One of the others in the group said, "What that woman's doing sounds like what they call the 'zeal of the converted', - you know, when someone's all enthusiastic about something because they've just been converted to it and they think it's really working well for them, or they think it's a much better way to live, and think everyone should live like that, such as giving up smoking, or becoming a Christian; you know, someone who's just been converted to Christianity might be all excited about it, and do things like telling someone trying to serve them in a chip shop all about how great it is, forgetting about the growing irritated queue behind them; or they might tell their friends all about it, saying it's just so great that Jesus is helping them and that he cares about people, and things like that, not stopping to think that their friends, who haven't come around to believing the idea that Jesus helps anyone, might think they just sound like a nutter for going on about it."
One of the others said, "I think some people do that kind of thing all their lives, not just when they're all newly excited about something! I think I know what you mean about smoking though: My dad used to smoke, but since he's given it up, every time he goes past someone smoking in the street, he says things like, 'Oh what a disgusting smell! I wish people wouldn't pollute the atmosphere by smoking in front of people!', and there's me thinking, 'Hang on, this is just the kind of thing you were doing yourself until recently!'"
They giggled, and one of them grinned and joked to the person who'd brought up the subject of the 'zeal of the converted', "So do you reckon this woman Jessica's talking about might be walking down the street sometimes, when she hears someone telling someone else they're annoyed with them, and she suddenly butts into their conversation, saying, 'I have the solution to the problem! What you need to do is to fantasise about torturing the person you're annoyed with, while they can't do anything to stop you!'"
They all laughed, and Jessica said with a grin, "I very much doubt she's that bad! I think she's mostly a nice person; ... but then, what do I really know, since I've learned that my judgments about people aren't as good as I used to assume they were!"
One of the group said, "I wonder how she feels about visiting her parents after just fantasising about torturing them. I wonder if she's all polite, pretending she likes them. Or I wonder if she starts feeling guilty about doing it. Imagine if she said, 'Hello Mummy dear. I've just been day-dreaming about beating you up. You cannot imagine how much fun it was! It was fantastic!'"
They laughed again, and one of them said for fun, "I bet there are lots of people who'd just love to say that to their parents, but wouldn't dare!"
Then Jessica said, "There was someone in this thread the woman started about being angry with her mum for not defending her when her brother punched her who said he agreed with the people who advised her not to have anything to do with her mum any more, but he said it would just spoil her enjoyment of life if she carried on feeling angry about her mum's behaviour, so it would be best if she found a way to stop doing that. He said his mother-in-law was still feeling bitter and angry towards her dad, who'd died a couple of decades ago, because he'd shown favouritism to her sister; and she hadn't spoken to her sister for a few decades because she felt so bitter towards her because of that. He said she was bitching on her 75th birthday about how her dad had always given her sister much better birthday parties than her, all those years ago, and he made some joke about how she'd had the opportunity to have big ones herself for quite some time since then, and she'd been good at taking that opportunity. And she didn't like it.
"Imagine if instead of that, he'd recommended she start fantasising about torturing her old dead dad, saying that was the therapeutic way to go to make herself feel better!"
One of the group sniggered and joked, "What a joyous birthday party that would have been. Just imagine it! Instead of party games, they could have played, 'Let's see who can have the most vivid day-dreams about torturing their old parents!'"
They smiled.
But then one of the group said seriously, "I remember hearing about a man who really wanted a girlfriend, and he would often sit down next to women and start talking about the way his parents had treated him years before, hoping for sympathy. But one day he did that, and the woman he was talking to didn't give him any sympathy at all. She listened for a bit, and then asked him how old he was. He said he was forty. She said, 'You're forty years old, and you're still upset about the way your parents treated you a few decades ago? If you're still upset about it now, it's not what they did that's upsetting you; it's the way you keep brooding over it that's upsetting you now.'
"And he had a good think about that, and realised she was right."
Another one of the group said, "Mind you, some things must be a lot harder to get over than others. But I read part of a book not long ago, where the author said he had an aunt who stayed angry for over fifty years about something her husband did, and she probably made her life a bit miserable by carrying on thinking about it, when it could have been happier if she'd just forgiven him and moved on. He said she and her husband had had a farm, but the soil wasn't very good, so not much would grow, and they didn't make much money. But she liked to buy little things to brighten up the place. They couldn't really afford them though, so she used to buy them on credit at a shop, expecting her husband to be able to pay for them later.
"But her husband didn't like that, and secretly told the shopkeeper not to give her things on credit any more. When she found out, she was really angry; and she stayed angry for literally decades!
"And the author told another story about Gilbert and Sullivan, who I think wrote light operas, or comic operas or something, in the 19th century. He said they started out as friends, but had a falling out and stopped speaking to each other, because they bought a theatre together - I think he said - and one of them bought a carpet for it, which the other one thought was way too expensive, and they argued about it, and the one who objected to the idea ended up taking the other one to court! And I think it said they never spoke to each other again, but every time one of them wrote the lyrics for new operas, he'd just send them to the other one, who'd write music for them, and send that to the other one. The author of this book reckoned they'd probably have been a lot happier if they'd managed to get over their anger and move on from the disagreement."
Becky grinned and said, "Imagine if they both thought it was a good idea to do that supposed anger relief exercise where they imagined beating each other up every day, and then when they were getting near retirement age, they decided to do one last opera, and they thought it might be their most popular one yet, that would make them loads of money, if they called it 'Personal Confessions' or something, and the lyrics of the songs were all about how they'd argued over a carpet years earlier, and hadn't spoken to each other since, and how every day they fantasised about torturing each other because they were still so angry about it, and thought it was a good way to release their anger.
"And just imagine if lots of people started going to see the opera, and there was this young man who'd just managed to get a rich girlfriend, and he was hoping to marry her so he could have her money, and he thought a good way to impress her and her parents so they'd be more likely to agree to him marrying her was to take them out to an opera, to supposedly demonstrate to them how cultured he was. Imagine if he didn't realise what the opera was about, so he took them out to it, and then to his embarrassment, he discovered it said things like, 'We've been fantasising about tying each other up and then beating each other to a pulp every day, all because we're still really angry because years and years ago, we had a big argument about a carpet one of us had bought that the other one thought was way too expensive, and we ended up arguing in court over it.' The parents wouldn't be very impressed by that, would they!"
The students laughed, and one grinned and said, "No! It would serve the man right for trying to marry his girlfriend for her money!"
But then the conversation turned serious again for a little while, as one student said, "What do scientists actually think of that therapy technique of day-dreaming about beating up people who've upset you? Do they think it does people good, or do they think it can be harmful, because it makes people more likely to get violent with people for real or something?"
Jessica said, "I'm not sure if they really know whether it's good or bad. I tried looking on the Internet to find out; but it seems no one's quite sure yet; they're still researching it, I think. I did read that there's a fairly similar technique that people used to think was a good anger management technique, where people were encouraged to bash pillows and tear things up and do other things like that to get their anger out of their systems; but it was found that although it made them feel better at the time, it brought out their aggressive sides, so they started getting angry more easily after that.
"I don't know if it's the same with this torture technique. I read that some people do think it's a good technique, because if someone's been treated badly and gets feelings of powerlessness and depression, it can make them feel more powerful and in control, and that can cheer them up. But I don't know if that means they'd have to keep doing it for ages, every time they got feelings of powerlessness again. It might feel really satisfying while they're having the day-dreams; but I wonder if there's a much better way they could deal with their anger, a way they could get rid of it for good.
"And I don't know if with some people, fantasising like that stirs up temptations in them to do those things for real, or to do other aggressive things."
One of the group said, "I wonder about that. Maybe it partly depends on how realistic the day-dreams are, like if people can really imagine themselves doing those things for real. I don't know. But I once heard someone on telly say that a lot of men who've murdered their wives say in court that they don't know what came over them but they just snapped one day under provocation and did something violent; but he said what tends to have happened in reality is that they've fantasised about murdering them for some time, like thinking, 'If she does that again, I'm going to kill her like this!', And it's like as if they're cuing part of their brains to take over and actually do the thing when it happens one day and it makes them angry, because when people are angry, they want to just do what they feel like doing quickly, without stopping to think about whether it's a good idea.
"I think it's a reaction that's programmed into people because in the old days, people would have had to act quickly when they were provoked sometimes, to prevent themselves from being killed by an enemy who was trying to attack their family or something, before they'd decided what would be the best thing to do about it. But it means that when they're just arguing with people, the more angry they get, the less they can think clearly.
"Mind you, another reason for that is that when you're arguing with someone, you're going to be under pressure to think up what to say right there on the spot, and it's harder to think up intelligent things to say quickly on the spur of the moment anyway, even if you're not angry. So maybe some people resort to violence partly because they're frustrated because they can't think of a way to win the argument, or they just feel really provoked, and they just want the argument to stop."
One of the students said, "I wonder if that was what was going on with someone I'm Facebook friends with. He's the dad of someone I went to school with. I've met him a few times, and he seemed quite nice. But he annoyed me not long ago. He's really fat, and he drinks a lot, and he gets episodes of gout, and he's been to hospital with chest pains once or twice, although they didn't find anything that serious wrong with him. But anyway, I think he must have got a bit scared about his health, because having not done much exercise at all for the past twenty years or thereabouts, as far as I know, he suddenly decided he wanted to take up running. For some reason, he seemed to like it. Maybe he was drunk when he tried it or something! I mean, I'd have thought he'd have been put off by getting out of breath really quickly, and things like that. But he wants to stick to doing it no matter what, for some reason, at the moment.
"Anyway, he got really ambitious, and decided he wanted to go in for this little running event, that was only a month away, where people would be aiming to run about ten kilometres. ... Maybe another decision he took when he was drunk, but who knows! Anyway, he registered for the event, and became Facebook friends with the organisers. I thought he'd be doing a good job if he actually managed to train so hard he actually had a chance of running the whole way ... or not dropping dead sometime in the first ten minutes! But he seemed to be confident of being able to do it, for some reason.
"But he would still put Facebook statuses up about how much he'd had to drink, and about other things that made him sound as if he wasn't that healthy, like still having the odd chest pain.
"Anyway, a couple of weeks before the run, he put an angry status up, saying he'd been told by the organisers that they didn't want him to run, and they'd revoked his registration, or something like that. He said he didn't think it was fair, and that he was going to kick up a stink and make sure the organisers got a bad name if they didn't change their minds.
"I sympathised with him a bit, for being suddenly told they didn't want him to take part in the race. But I thought he'd probably be better off trying to reassure them he'd be sensible, instead of antagonising them, since I thought annoying them would probably make them want him to be there even less, since they might think he wasn't very nice, and wasn't willing to compromise or anything.
"So I commented on what he'd written, saying I didn't think what had happened was fair, but saying they were probably worried he'd die or something because of his health conditions, and the fact he hadn't been training for long, so I could understand their decision. I said, 'Why not reassure them you'll be careful, like saying you'll stop running if you start feeling ill?'
"I was thinking that if they were reassured, they might let him run after all.
"But it seems he just got annoyed with me, thinking I was just taking their side. He said, 'You sound like a health and safety freak! I don't like the way you're standing up for them when they're standing in my way!'
"All I'd really been doing was trying to persuade him that if he tried to think of things from their point of view and understand why they were taking the decision they were taking, and if he reassured them that he'd be careful, they'd be more willing to talk things through with him and maybe change their minds than they would if he just antagonised them. It just didn't make sense to me that he wasn't even interested in trying to understand things from their point of view.
"He just had to put up with being disappointed and not running in the event in the end. But I lost respect for him over that, and decided not to say anything else, but just let things take their course."
One of the other students smiled and joked, "Don't start day-dreaming about torturing that man while he's tied up and can't do anything about it, will you! You wouldn't want to get more and more tempted to do it and end up doing it for real, would you! After all, it sounds as if he's got enough medical problems as it is!"
The student who'd told the others about the argument chuckled and said, "Don't be yucky! I wouldn't want to even day-dream about doing that to someone for such a little thing as that; and I'm not even annoyed with him any more. It just irritated me when it happened, that's all."
Another one of the group said to the rest, "Do you really think if you fantasise about how you'd really like to do something bad, it can make you more likely to end up doing it? Hey, if it can, I wonder if it works like that with habits people get into too, like say if someone was used to always bawling out a string of expletives every time they got frustrated with their computer at school because it wasn't doing what they wanted, and they thought they wouldn't want to do that at home with their family listening, since then they'd get told off, but then one day they were at home on their computer, and their dad was standing next to them, and their computer did the kind of thing that annoyed them at school, and before they really thought about what they were doing, they bawled out a whole heap of swear words!"
They giggled. Then one teased, "What, so are you saying you reckon they could get away with that kind of behaviour at school, because their teachers wouldn't mind them bawling out swear words every time they got annoyed with their computer in their class?"
The one who'd been talking before said, "No, I was thinking they might do it when their teachers weren't there."
Another one joined in, grinning and saying, "Oh how likely is it really that the teachers would be out of the room so often they could get into a habit of yelling out swear words in class like that? ... Well, I suppose it might be possible, say if the teachers played truant a lot."
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