Two is not company

Today was a very disturbing day. As a practising counsellor, i normally feel that listening to emotional baggage is part of my job, and my training has helped me deal with avoidance of transference. However, i was not prepared for today’s onslaught of cases. All the three cases in a row, one after the other, involved the disturbing behaviour of very young children in school, also resulting in failing academics. Per force, i was forced to call for the parents; for the home environment contributes a lot to the way a child behaves in school. We adults are forced by systems and rules not to carry our emotional baggage to our place of work; however, children displace their emotions in schools!

Anyway, the first set of parents walked in, but when they sat down, they left a vacant chair in between them. I sensed that something was not working here, and when i placed the issue of the disturbing behaving of their toddler in school, they looked at each other. As they were answering my questions in monosyllables, i suggested that i talk to them separately. They could not be more relieved! The mother had an earful of complaints against the husband, and she emphatically stated that the marriage was not working from day one! She has managed to move out after 5 years of living together, and the son was with her during the week, and the husband took the child to his place of living on week-ends (well, i could hardly term it home could i?) At the end of the tirade, almost as an afterthought, she wanted to know what was wrong with her son! I chose to reserve my comments, and then had a session with the father. He had exactly the same kind of complaints that his wife had registered, which would have been amusing, if it had not been such a serious situation! I mean, here they were claiming they could not get along and did not see eye to eye even on a single topic; yet, they were totally in agreement in their view of each other! They were not even willing to work on the relationship, and though they had taken no legal steps as yet, both of them were sure that it will not be long before they do the rounds of the lawyers, family courts and mediation counselling.

In all this, i think they did not even pause to think what damage they were doing to the child. As an example of the trauma that the child was going through, he told me, when i was talking to him, that he hates it when someone talks loudly to him, he hates noises, for his home was full of noise: his parents were always quarrelling, hurling abuses and accusations at each other. I could imagine this child sitting in the middle of the room, with the parents throwing barbs at each other, and this child ducking every time!

There was no big resolution to this case; at least the first session was largely history taking. But the session left me feeling drained; and with so many unanswered questions. Like, why do couples decide to sustain a relationship they know would never last a lifetime? Why do they get into a relationship because it would require too much effort to ‘cancel a wedding’ as this particular mother stated? And the most vital question, why go ahead and decide to have a child and the additional and awesome responsibility of being parents when you have not yet learnt to be partners?

I am not advocating easy dissolution of relationships; in fact i work with lawyers who try their utmost to help the couples who approach them for the first hearing, to try and help them make the relationship work, not because of social pressure, but because the cause for the conflict may be something that can be worked on. But what i mean is, when you are so sure that the partnership is doomed right from day one, is there any sense in putting another human being through the trauma?

Mohana Narayanan