Ask Dr. Frank

FAMILY THERAPIST FRANK PITTMAN, M.D., IMPARTS HIS, WIT AND HIS
WISDOM ONLEARNING HOW TO HELP PEOPLE, THERAPISTS WHO LOVE TOO MUCH, THE
TRUTH ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY (NOT TO MENTION HETEROSEXUALITY), DRIFTING
SLOWLY THROUGH LIFE, AND THE LONGING TO BE SINGLE--AGAIN.

DEAR DR. FRANK: AS A SENIOR PSYCHOLOGY STUDENT READING YOUR FIRST
DR. FRANK COLUMN, I HAD A HARD TIME BELIEVING THAT AN EXPERIENCED
THERAPIST WOULD FELL A WOMAN WHO IS NOT IN LOVE WITH HER HUSBAND, AND NOT
HAPPY IN HER MARRIAGE, TO GET A HOBBY LIKE GARDENING AND THAT SHE IS
PROBABLY "ONE OF THOSE ROMANTIC WOMEN WHO EXPECTS A MAN TO MAKE HER
HAPPY." NOT ONLY IS IT EACH SPOUSE'S " JOB" TO MAKE THE OTHER HAPPY, BUT
IT IS NOT SOME MENTAL DISORDER ON THE PART OF THE WOMAN. IF SHE IS NOT IN
LOVE WITH HER HUSBAND, STAYING HAPPILY MARRIED WILL BE ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE.
MAYBE SHE SHOULD DISCUSS HER FEELINGS WITH HER HUSBAND TO SEE IF A
SOLUTION COULD BE WORKED OUT BETWEEN THEM WITHOUT DIVORCE BEING INVOLVED;
HOWEVER, SHE PROBABLY FEELS TOO MUCH GUILT ABOUT THESE FEELINGS, WHICH
SHE CANNOT JUST GET OVER.

THERE WAS NOT ONE CLASS THAT I HAVE TAKEN THAT TAUGHT THAT THE BEST
COURSE OF ACTION IS TO PASS JUDGMENT AND ASSIGN BLAME, I CAN'T HELP BUT
BELIEVE THAT WHAT I READ WAS VERY SEXIST AND UNPROFESSIONAL.

Dear Hard Time Believing: I assure you I would have given the same
answer to a man (and I've seen many) who expected his wife to bring
happiness into his life and blames her if he's not having a good day. The
romantic expectations of women produce just as much unhappiness as those
of men, and are no more nor less a tyranny to their partners.

You are learning how to help people escape the tyranny of their
emotions. In the early stages of their training, we encourage budding
therapists to act neutral. Inexperienced therapists tend to sympathize
with their clients' emotions and may feel as paralyzed by the feelings as
the clients are. As developing therapists get more wisdom, we let them
point out to clients what the client is doing wrong, what sensible people
would do under these circumstances, and what the feelings are that get
the client into trouble. Most of the emotional troubles people have in
life are not due to mental disorder but to misinformation about feelings
and relationships. Few things create as much confusion as the urgency of
being "in love."

The woman who raised the question believes, as you do, that it is
her husband's ("each spouse's") job to make her happy and "if she is not
in love with her husband, staying happily married will be almost
impossible." Such foreboding beliefs doom marriages and families. Please
refrain from practicing either psychotherapy or marriage until you
overcome them. Being in love is a high; it is also a state of temporary
insanity. It is glorious but inefficient, and in the best of
relationships, it will pass. It is certainly easy to be loving to someone
with whom you feel "in love," just as it is easy for a malfunctioning
automobile to run smoothly when it is going down hill. The only vehicles
or relationships worth having are those that can get you through the
rough spots and the tough uphill climbs. Loving your partner is an
investment in both your marriage and your character. Being loving has
very little to do with being "in love."

Depressed people may experience their depression the absence of
in-loveness in their marriage and try to treat it with divorce or
infidelity rather than with exercise, activity, psychotherapy, or Prozac.
Our letter writer is unhappy, but can't get help--from herself, her
husband, or a therapist--because she blames her problem on her marriage
and her lack of in-loveness, which she perceives to be a state of tragic
deprivation that is outside her control.

The romantic approach toward life is both irresponsible and
suicidal. Let us hope therapists don't buy into it.

Dear Dr. Frank: Several years ago I was seeing a psychologist and
grew very attached to her. She wasn't only a therapist but a mother
figure as well. She allowed mew to see and phone her outside the office.
A few months ago, she terminated my allowance to see or talk to her
anymore. I grew obsessed and started to drive by her house and send
unwanted letters (as well as making unwanted phone calls). My current
therapist has had me write a "good-bye letter" to this former therapist
to close it emotionally. Even with writing that letter, I am still
compelled by my obsessions. I drive by her house, etc.

I know these obsessive acts are wrong, but I still can't keep
myself from engaging in them. I was wondering if you had any
suggestions?

Dear Obsessed: First, stop doing it. Nothing you do to close the
relationship emotionally will work unless you first stop bothering this
foolish former therapist who led you on and then suddenly cut you loose.
I know you are afraid you'd go crazy if you didn't do these things, but
you probably won't, and if you do, that will be a lot easier for your
sensible new therapist to treat than obsessive transference.

There is much to be said for getting your therapy from therapists
you don't like very much, and especially those that don't like you very
much. Therapists are not selling love by the hour. If you want a mother,
try your own. If you try her, and that doesn't work out, then find some
frustrated mother who needs a child, but leave therapists alone; the good
ones are too busy to mother you and the bad ones are too crazy.

Dear Dr. Frank: A significant portion of our people seem to be
homosexual. My work involves incarcerated women, where there is an 80
percent same-sex experience rate. Why haven't more studies been done in
this area? Brain scans and hormone studies might indicate biological
differences that are natural. I can find almost nothing on the study of
bisexuals. Are there any recent studies done on this subject?

Dear Curious In Prison: Of course women in a world without men
would have whatever sex they have with women, just as men in a world
without women would have whatever sex they have with men. Having same-sex
experience does not make someone a "homosexual" any more than having
other-sex experience makes one a "heterosexual."

There are only two genders, not four. The lines between straight
and gay are not dear, and sexual preference is simply a matter of
self-designation, like statements of religious preference, which can be
persuasions of varying intensity and permanence.

There has been a recent flurry of studies about homosexuality,
trying to find a biological explanation for it, perhaps some distortion
in the configuration of the hypothalamus. None are convincing. The effort
to prove that homosexuals are mutants of some sort (and therefore not
responsible for what they do sexually) is a strange political ploy
apparently aimed at reducing homophobia by declaring homosexuals as
something between sexual cripples and a minority species, on both counts
deserving of government protection and support.

This effort strikes me as bizarre and short-sighted. We all know,
and always have known, that homosexuality is perfectly normal and
natural. All human beings, of whatever gender and whatever shaped
hypothalamus, are quite capable of having sex successfully with men,
women, children, animals, machines, and certain kinds of plants. Which
they do is a matter of circumstances; which they prefer is a matter of
taste. Those tastes are far more interesting and varied than the
straight/gay dichotomists on either side of the divide could
imagine.

Recent polls on the matter find that 15 percent of adults have had
sex with both men and women at some time in their adult life, three
percent have done so in the past year, and only one percent of adults
claim to have spent a totally homosexual year. We know people lie to poll
takers about sex and all three figures may represent only a half or a
third the actual incidence of the activity. We recall (perhaps with
embarrassment) that homosexuality was routine during the hormonal storms
of adolescence (pubertal boys will stick it in a light socket if they
can't work up a circle jerk). It becomes dear that homosexuality is both
normal and common.

The human species is lucky enough to be naturally bisexual, or even
omnisexual. The one percent or so of exclusive homosexuals, some of whom
claim to have felt only repulsion since the age of four at the thought of
heterosexual activities, may be different from the great majority of us,
just as the rigid homophobes who get red in the face and nauseous at the
thought of homosexuality may have a hypothalamus different from yours or
mine. In the absence of other convincing explanations (and all the
efforts to implicate hormones or heredity in homosexuality peter out), my
guess is that psychological factors are at work.

But the fact that people have had homosexual experiences lately or
in the past does not make them any different from the rest of us (though,
as Woody Allen quipped, it doubles their chances of a date on Saturday
night). Let us just normalize bisexuality, pathologize homophobia or
heterophobia, and stop categorizing people on the basis of their sexual
preference of the moment, much less on their experiences in times past or
while in prison.

Dear Dr. Frank: My girlfriend and I are both capable and
intelligent people with many dreams and good ideas concerning our
respective professions, but we lack the motivation to take the steps to
make those dreams come true. The fact is, we enjoy having lots of free
time and sleeping in on our days off, but at the same time suffer nagging
pains of guilt over our choice to just kind of "drift" through
life.

We lack either the discipline and/or the courage to do what would
make us feel better about ourselves in the long run. Where do we start to
remedy this problem?

Dear Sleeping in Seattle. Congratulations! You at least rolled over
and wrote a letter, and I'm honored that it was to me. But I'm worried.
If you are feeling merely guilt over wasting your lives, then you are not
yet convinced that this is your life you are wasting rather than your
parents' investment in you that you are brattily squandering. Until you
are absolutely sure this is your life, your time, your money, you may
have difficulty spending it wisely.

You are not alone. Many people find life a total bother. This past
week, the Grateful Dead were in town, followed by mobs of Deadheads whose
idea of pursuing happiness is being careful to do nothing not of their
own choosing. Here they are, middle aged, still trying to be an
embarrassment to their parents. Such an approach toward a life without
past or future, merely savoring the moment in the fullness of its
emptiness, is usually achieved stoned.

Normal people, especially those who don't smoke pot, feel an
intermittent restlessness, a desire to step outside their own heads.
Whenever that restlessness happens, seize the moment. But if the
restlessness doesn't happen, be sure to create it. First, buy an alarm
clock. Then get up in the morning and overcaffeinate yourselves. Second,
get some exercise, not enough to exhaust you, just enough to get your
muscles twitching for action. Third, turn off, or even shoot out, the
television set. Fourth, seek some daily separate experience that would
make for interesting and inspiring conversation with one another when you
get back together. Do not let your activity be solely dependent upon your
partner's activity; the mating rituals of slugs are leisurely at
best.

Only then, after you are up and around, doing things and sharing
the experiences of life, can you start thinking of what you are going to
do to make your lives meaningful.

Life is what happens while you are busy doing things. It hardly
matters what you are doing; once the momentum overcomes the inertia, you
are in motion, life will start happening; you won't even have to pedal,
just steer.

Dear Dr. Frank: I love my husband 22 and he's 23. We have the same
views the same humor. He was fascinating and fun when we dated. But for
the past year or two, since we've been married, I miss being single, not
to date other men, but just to live that single life. I still want him in
my life, though. Now, he seems to think that marriage means you have to
be settled and boring. This is making me feel resentful toward him. Could
it be I who has the problem and not my husband?

Dear Longing to Be Single: Yes. You could well be the problem here.
In general, it is helpful and empowering to assume that a change in your
behavior might have beneficial effects on the crisis at hand. So the
first step in solving any problem is to assume that you are doing
something wrong. Your willingness to make that assumption is a good sign.
We know the two of you married at an age when most kids shouldn't be out
after dark, and that is likely to be a factor.

As you try to figure out what you could do differently, you must
assume that you are immature and that adulthood is not yet coming
naturally for you, so you might have to work at it a bit. You might
assume that you are chomping at the bit in ways that frighten your young
husband and call forth efforts on his part to rein you in. You might even
assume that you are behaving brattily and eliciting parental behavior
from him. Do you feel the need to have a parent take care of you, or to
have a parent play "catch me if you can," with you, or perhaps
both?

On the other hand, you might also assume that your husband is
frightened of marriage too. He may be taking it far too solemnly, as if
the fun of his life must now come to an end. It may be you that is
scaring him. Ask him.

Or he might have learned to fear marriage from his parents. What
does he think he learned about marriage from them? Ask him. Married
people need to talk about marriage, about their fears and expectations of
it.

Meanwhile, try acting like a grown-up. If you calm down, he may
then loosen up--or he may get even duller. If he loosens ups your problem
is solved and the two of you can explore the joys of adult-hood together.
(You do realize that grown-ups in general are a lot happier than kids,
but it's your job to discover why.) On the other hand, if you shape up
and he responds by getting duller, get thee to a family therapist.

PHOTO: Dr. Frank

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