Tradition

Art sits dejectedly in my office, his elbows on his thighs, his head, shaking side to side, cradled by his hands. “I told you it would never work. She’s unrelenting. Tradition is everything to her. But it’s ridiculous! I’ve been in this country most of my life. How can she expect me to accept an arranged marriage? Go back to India and marry the girl her sister finds for me? It’s crazy.”

“I’m so sorry, Art. I can only imagine how difficult this must be for you.”

Lifting his head, he says, “And that’s another thing. She said she absolutely forbid me to have anyone call me anything but my given name, Arjun. She repeated it, yelling, ‘Arjun, Arjun, Arjun. That’s your name and I don’t expect to hear you called anything else.’ Of course I’m not about to do that. My friends haven’t called me Arjun since the first or second grade. And they made fun of me even then. She has no idea what it’s like, how difficult it is for a kid to fit into this culture. And particularly today. Even my brown skin can bring those looks – are you one of those?; are you illegal?; are you stealing our jobs?” He covers his face with one hand. “But there’s no point discussing all that.” Pause. “What am I going to do?” he asks beseechingly?

“I was just going to ask you the same thing.”

“I don’t know. I love Jessica. I want to marry her. We like the same things – hiking, kayaking, watching old movies. We think the same way, have the same values, love kids. My mother just doesn’t get it. We don’t have to be from the same culture, although we basically are. I’m probably more American than Indian.”

“Is that true? I mean you have grown up here most of your life, educated here, working here, but is it true that your Indian culture means so little to you?”

“Right now I just wish I could disown the whole culture.”

“But that’s your anger speaking, right?”

“I don’t know,” he says dismissively.

“I remember how joyfully you’ve described the Hindu weddings you’ve attended, how you know all about your gods, how you say you sometimes pray to one god or another.”

“But that’s just habit. It’s all a bunch of superstition. I don’t believe any of that stuff.”

I realize I’m pushing too hard to have Art take ownership of the Indian part of himself and wonder if that’s because he’s projecting those feelings onto me rather than feeling them himself. I need to step back.

“What are your thoughts?”

“I know I’m not going let my mother bully me. And I also know she won’t retreat. She said Jessica – no, actually she said ‘that girl’ – would never be welcome in her house, that she would never see our children. That hurts. And I know she’ll stick to it. There’s not going to be any Hollywood ending like in The Big Sick.”

Silence.

“I wish my father would say something.”

Is he also wishing I’d say something? I wonder.

“I know my father agrees with me. Or at least he’d accept my decision. But he always bows to her.” Pause. “And that’s another thing she said, ‘Your father and I had an arranged marriage. It turned out well for us.’ I had to bite my tongue there. It turned out well for her. She got to move to the US, be a doctor’s wife and stay enclosed in the Indian community. I don’t think that’s what my father would have wanted, but he’d never say.”

“So you’re angry at your mother for being too dominant and at your father for being too passive.”

“Exactly!”

Silence.

“I was thinking about Jessica and my relationship. Wondering who’s the more dominant one.” Pause. “I guess I’d say she is.” Pause. “I wonder how I feel about that.”

“Good question.”

“Not so good actually.”

“So are you implying that you were raised by a dominant woman and that perhaps now you’re attracted to a similarly dominant women?”

“Oh no! I came in here thinking I had one problem – how to deal with my mother – and now I have two problems – how to deal with my mother and Jessica.”

“Perhaps it’s not so much how you deal with either of them, but how you deal with yourself, the person you want to be, the person you are now given the family and the culture you were raised in. Is there a place between complying and rebelling? Are you unwittingly driven to repeat patterns from your past that you may not consciously want to repeat?”

“Stop! Too much. It’s giving me a headache.”

“There is a lot , but I was just trying to say that we humans are very complex beings and that it’s helpful for us to try and understand ourselves as best as possible.”

The Election

“I came here to gloat,” Diane says, grinning ear to ear.

I feel as though I’ve been slapped, rendered immediately shocked and speechless. I know exactly what Diane is referring to, the election.

“It was worth it for me to pay you for the session, just to say, ‘You see, I told you so.’ You were entirely out of touch. Thought you understood the little people, but the little people never wanted your elite Obama. Now you’ll see what they want.”

Finding it difficult to regain my composure, I struggle to remind myself that I am the therapist here, that although I haven’t seen Diane for over two years, we had a lengthy therapeutic relationship. It is my responsibility to understand the intensity of her anger. Although it is not my usual practice to discuss my politics with patients, Diane made it impossible to avoid. She scoured the internet looking for information about me and soon knew my political leanings, taking great pleasure in baiting me into arguments. She was definitely capable of raising my ire, like the time she said, “When was the last time you were hired by a poor person?” I experienced most of those interactions as Diane’s attempt to maintain distance between us, emphasizing our differences, rather than our shared connection. But this feels like unadulterated rage.   

“Diane, if you feel you won, which you obviously do, why are you so angry? And why are you so angry at me in particular.”

“’Anger Trumps Love,’ to rephrase an expression being thrown around these days.”

I remain silent.

“All your goody, goody peace, love and compassion. It’s bullshit. It’s about anger. It’s about taking what you want. It’s about being able to win, regardless.”

As with the rise of hate crimes across our country, I hear Diane saying that Trump has given her permission to express the rage she has long bottled up. Is she suggesting that I didn’t allow her access to that rage? Perhaps that’s true. Is she angry with me about that? Perhaps.

“Do you hate me, Diane?”

Now she looks startled. “No, why would I hate you? As you said, my side won.”

“You feel to me as though you hate me. You come here to gloat, as you said, very angry and clearly wanting to say, take this, bitch, suffer, I won, you get to crawl. Yes, that’s how it feels to me, it feels as though you’re wanting to dominate over me and have me submit.” As I say this, I think that perhaps all our arguments over the years were about this issue, that it wasn’t about maintaining distance, but rather trying to attain dominance. Only one person could win and she was determined that it would be her.

“I definitely feel I finally won over you. But I don’t hate you. I’m just enjoying my victory and I want you to admit defeat.”

In my mind I say, no way. I definitely admit losing this battle and suffering the sadness and grief that comes with it. But admit defeat, no way. “So what would my admitting defeat mean for you?”

“I’d have won.”

“I understand that, but what would that mean for you?”

“That I was right.”

“And what does being right get you?”  

“You can’t dismiss me and look down on me and see me as stupid.”

“Diane, are you sure that it’s me you’re reacting to now or is it more your feelings about your family, your parents and elder brothers who you experienced as dismissive and contemptuous of your opinions and intellect.”

“But they all agree with me politically.”

“I understand that. And I understand that it may feel when you and I disagree that I am being dismissive of you and your ideas. But from my perspective, you and I have very different world views. That doesn’t mean I question your right to your opinion or that I think less of you.”

“Are you sure about that?” she asks, challengingly.

That stops me. “That’s a very difficult question, Diane. I certainly don’t think less of your intelligence. But as I’m sure you very well know, we live in an extremely polarized society where people spend more and more time with people they agree with, they read material that supports the positions they already hold. So may I think less of the people who disagree with me, perhaps, perhaps it’s sometimes hard for me to understand how you or whoever holds the position you do. But, and this is a very big but, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. My caring does – eh - override your politics.”

“You thought it didn’t you? You thought to say, ‘Love trumps hate,’ but decided against it.”

“Yes, I thought it, but decided against it. You see, you’re smart and insightful, as always.”