On having relationships with real people

During the period between roughly my graduation from high school and going away to college, on the one hand, and, on the other, the arrival of my own children, I observed a couple of households that seemed to me pretty much my ideal of the Latter-day Saint family.  In the years afterward, however, I noticed that even such seemingly “ideal” families had problems and experienced sorrows and heartbreaks — and perhaps, in those two particular cases, ironically even a bit more than their “share” of such trials and disappointments.

I’ve long since given up looking for, let alone thinking that I’ve found, perfection in families.  It just doesn’t exist in this world — nor can it, with the flawed human materials that we all are.

I remember, though, an experience with a daughter of one of those families.  She was, she volunteered to me, receiving professional counseling.

I think I was fairly surprised.  But I knew her (or thought I knew her) fairly well — I had first met her when she was quite a little girl — so I felt comfortable enough to ask her if she might share what her issue was.  Perhaps I could even help.

Well, she said, she had been abused as a girl.

Now, I was definitely shocked.

I asked by whom she had been abused, and she said that it was by her family.

“Physically abused?” I asked.  “Sexually abused?”

No, no, she hastily responded.   Neither of those.  Simply mistreated by her parents.

I knew, liked, and deeply respected her parents.  I had never seen in her family even the slightest hint of abuse, nor any trace of attitudes or personality traits in her parents that might lead to abuse.  Her parents were kind, warm, loving, intelligent, and funny people, deeply committed to the Gospel but scarcely in a harsh or fanatical way.

So I asked her whether she could give me an example of what she meant by “abuse.”

She thought for a moment or two, and then offered up this example:  When she was much younger and was sitting around the table with her siblings, her mother brought a homemade cherry pie over from the oven.  Her mother cut the pie and handed the slices out to those at the table.  And her sister, she recalled, was given a slightly bigger piece.

Seriously.  That was it.

I was completely astounded.

It seems that the counselor whom she was seeing had encouraged her to keep a notebook with her and to write down in it any and all such cases of injustice done to her by her family, as they occurred to her.

Doing so was supposed, somehow, to help her overcome whatever specific issue she was seeing him for.

It seemed to me, and still seems to me, some of the most foolish advice I’ve ever heard.

Anybody can think of slights from even the closest, the most beloved, of family and friends.  Heck, we can imagine such slights when they didn’t even exist.  And dwelling on them can destroy just about any human relationship.

To dwell on perceived wrongs, to lovingly cherish grudges, to nurture a sense of victimhood, is, surely, one of the worst things that any person can do — at least, if he or she wishes to be happy and to have relationships with actual flesh-and-blood mortals.

“He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool,” said Brigham Young, “and he who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool.”