STORIES OF LIFE
Anatomy of an Affair Dr. Jos Cletus Plackal
Parents, watch out for early signs of disaffection, disgruntlement or disruption in your child’s emotional world. It’s a wake-up call for you to address; seek outside help, and don’t wait endlessly for an avalanche to hit your family.
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ove is the most mystical, magical of all realities, so deep and dynamic; it is synonymous with life itself. Love has been the object of zillions of studies and yet it’s like a drop in the ocean. Scientific researches and religious books as well as literary works have all gone on to explore and extol the different facets of this most amazing diamond called love. There is an alarming increase in tragic events related to love affairs, sometimes involving minors! For many a family, an affair itself is a tragedy! Unlike in the West, in India there exists an invisible yet most powerful bond among the family members. Loyalty to the family is essential since the family’s ego is more important than that of the individual. The family ego is crystallized through belief systems put into practice for generations, caste, customs, clan, cultural milieu etc. The present study is an attempt to understand a love affair from a psychological point of view
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with all its complexity and implications for the extended family, and to the lovers themselves. Lynda (not the real name), 22, completing her postgraduate studies, lives in the college hostel. She shows signs of distraction and disinterestedness in everything including studies. Lately she has started feeling isolated from her classmates and teachers. Occasionally she picks fights even with her best friend! At home Lynda feels more miserable in that she is very lonely and lost and her older sister gets on her nerves, all the time. Lynda complained that her parents sided with the older sister all the time and felt that she was not worth anything at home. Besides, the older sister was working overtime finding fault with Lynda. And recently she has been working day and night as a
detective to find all the secrets of her ‘naughty’ younger sister’s cyber crimes! No wonder Lynda laments, “How I wish I could run away from this “terrible threesome”! Lynda’s older sister’s painstaking pursuit of detective work paid off finally. She briefed her parents of the latest development that Lynda was having an affair with a boy who is from a different caste and that they do chat a lot etc! That was like a bomb explosion and the family ego was ruined. The anxiety about the shame that might befall on them if the extended family came to know about this led to many sleepless nights! The ensuing social stigma was unthinkable… The whole family dynamics went berserk and the family was at the edge of an emotional precipice. It is at this juncture that Lynda was brought into counselling. At the counseling Lynda was quite
Pallikkutam | April 2014