Marriage: it takes two (a parable)

In honor of the institution of marriage, we offer the following parable, drawing liberally on more than 50 idiomatic pairs (55 to be exact). Enjoy.

They’d had their ups and downs.  For the better part of two years, their relationship was touch and go. 

He left bright and early for work, she an hour later, first attending to household odds and ends, then dropping the kids at day care before arriving at the office. Traffic, as always, was hit or miss, so when she arrived late she could count on her boss reading her chapter and verse about punctuality, and corporate policy. 

She was born and bred in the South, a prim and proper woman who put heart and soul into the marriage.  To him, life was more cut and dried.  He had some hard and fast rules (a list of do’s and don’ts, if you will), none more important than telling his kids to mind their p’s and q’s.

Year after year he complained about the wear and tear of his job.  He knew the ins and outs of his work, and fought tooth and nail to climb the corporate ladder (how else was he going to earn the family’s bread and butter?).

Day after day she encouraged him to leave, to search far and wide for a new position. He was sick and tired of mistreatment at work (not to mention the daily aches and pains), and his displeasure was growing in leaps and bounds. Twice his raise was denied (“just wait and see” his colleagues told him), but he was tired of the non-stop song and dance from management.    

At home, she was at his beck and call (“a life on pins and needles,” she once told a friend). But she too was suffering from the hustle and bustle of life.  It was time for a change.  And money was tight. They’d debate the facts and figures, but rarely saw eye to eye.  Now and then they’d agree (e.g., on that new set of pots and pans, for example), but with everything costing an arm and a leg, opportunities to save were few and far between. 

Whenever he was down and out, she’d search for that magic elixir. They’d talk through the pros and cons (volleying back and forth), and though her message was short and sweet, his ire grew. Round and round, they went, on and on he complained. He finally shared: “All I really want is a moment of peace and quiet.”

Was life ever fair and square?  Rarely, of course, but it was time, she insisted, to stop the ranting and raving. The kids were safe and sound (witness their endless game of hide and seek), and the house was always neat and tidy (she kept everything spic and span).  Challenging days, she told him, are part and parcel of life.  Greet every day, she urged, as a chance to live and learn. 

First and foremost, she reminded him, the family was alive and kicking.  Through thick and thin, they had managed to build a life together. Abandon the path?  No rhyme or reason to do so. It was time to forgive and forget. Time to yield to the notion that life, in all its glory, is not meant to be free and easy.

Between sink or swim, she told him, it was time to swim. 

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When you go to the bathroom, do you take your Smartphone with you?

If you do, you may (emphasis on “may”) have nomophobia (fear of being without mobile phone coverage).  

Laugh, if you must, but a recent article in telegraph.co.uk made this remarkable statement: “According to recent surveys, more than half of people in the UK suffer from it.”  The article continued: “The phobia is brought on by the fear of losing signal, running out of battery or even losing sight of a mobile phone.” And it’s an international phenomenon.

Explains Michael Carr-Gregg, an adolescent psychologist, as quoted in a cnn.com article: “I have clients who abstain from school or their part-time jobs to look for their phones when they cannot find them in the morning.” He adds: “Many of my clients go to bed with their mobile phones . . .  just like how one will have the teddy bear in the old days . . . . the phone has become our digital security blanket.”

Added psychiatrist Eric Yu Hai Chen, in that same cnn.com article: “One could look at this as a form of addiction to the phone. . . . The fear is part of the addiction. The use of the hand phone has some features that predispose this activity to addiction, similar to video games . . . .”

Nomophobia joins a long list of phobias suffered by man (leading us to wonder: do animals have phobias?  I know that our dogs won’t eat when we leave the house for a few hours – perhaps they’re autophobic – the fear of being alone or isolated). Reportedly, roughly 10% of Americans have bonafide phobias.

Nearly 200 phobias to choose from

Reviewing a list of nearly 200 phobias, I suddenly realized that, for most of my life, I’ve been tetraphobic (fear of the number 4).  Who knew that was on the list? 

And how about papaphobia (fear of the Pope), koumpounophobia (fear of buttons), or turophobia (fear of cheese). 

Who knew? 

As I read through the list, I started to wonder: where’s the line? That is, what’s the difference between a fear, and a phobia? Here’s how the folks at www.hudpages.com described it: “When you avoid something to the point that it negatively impacts your life, you’ve developed a phobia – a persistent fear of an object or situation which you go to great lengths in avoiding. Your fear of the danger posed by that thing is typically disproportional to the actual danger.”

Reasonable enough.  But now the question begged: how do we get rid of them?  How do we dissipate their impact?  Apparently, “thinking good thoughts” won’t do the trick – it’s more complicated than that. The article at Hudpages.com explained:

“When you have a phobia, you have a pattern within your brain; a linkage between certain thoughts, certain feelings, and certain physical reactions. This is why phobias tend to be resistant to simply ‘thinking good thoughts’. Exposing you to your triggering object or situation unleashes a cascade of intense emotion and physical sensations of fear. This is very hard to ‘think’ your way out of when you're in the middle of it.”

Overcoming Phobias: 6 principles

So what do you we do?  Dr. Fredric Neuman, writing for psychologytoday.com, outlined six principles to guide us in overcoming our phobias:

1.       “In order to overcome a phobia, the affected person has to spend time publicly trying to do things that everyone else can do effortlessly.

2.       “Practicing to overcome a phobia takes time, sometimes a lot of time. And repetition.

3.       “The things phobics are afraid of are not so awful when they do happen.

4.       “You can judge progress by what you can do, not how you feel. If you are not panicky, but you are not doing something a little more difficult than what you did yesterday, you are not getting better. [Conversely], if you are nervous or panicky all the time, but you are going further and further into the phobic situation, you are getting better.

5.       “Phobics run into ‘stuck points’ from time to time. Using an aide or a helper makes all the difference.

6.       “Sometimes the very things phobics are afraid of give them the most satisfaction when they are no longer afraid.”

And psychologist John Grohol, writing for www.psychcentral.com (which he founded), outlined a host of cognitive-behavioral techniques that are available for overcoming phobics – the trick is finding the one that works for you (e.g., gradual exposure, sudden exposure or “flooding”, the partnership method, keeping a daily mood log, positive imaging and distraction, to name a few).

I do anticipate that, in the days ahead, I can easily avoid spiders (arachnophobia), snakes (ophidiophobia) and  clowns (coulrophobia), but I have been known, of late, to suffer from bormaphobia (fear of boring meetings) and narsaphobia (fear of listening to narcissists).  But I manage. 

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