The Answer “The first thing my boyfriend told me about his mother was that she was a horrid and manipulative woman and that if I allowed her to get too close, she would meddle and ultimately ruin any relationship...” ~ Blake That’s how last week’s letter began. We value that letter, not because it has a happy ending--it doesn’t--but because it offers such rich lessons. Today we offer our explanation.

For three years the letter writer, Blake, pushed her boyfriend to maintain contact with his mother, even though his mother was a harridan who publicly belittled her son. As a “big family person,” Blake was determined to “rebuild their relationship.”

This man had a lifetime of dealing with his mother. He knew the only way to control her was by escaping her, but his girlfriend wouldn’t accept that. In the end Blake’s interference put her boyfriend back under his mother’s thumb. Now his mother wants Blake out of the picture.

Blake was amazed her boyfriend couldn’t see what was happening, but what happened was exactly what she refused to see in the beginning. Blake’s “good intentions” returned the victim to his victimizer, and the victimizer victimized Blake. The comeuppance is perfect, though sad.

Roger Schank, an early researcher on artificial intelligence, wanted to build smart computers, and he began by wondering how people solve problems. The answer he discovered is fascinating.

Schank noticed when people are asked a question they don’t ponder the answer. Rather they say and do whatever comes first to mind. That explains why most polls are worthless. They don’t represent actual thought. They are no more than a regurgitation of one’s fixed ideas.

The implication is clear. Most of the time we don’t assess reality. We take a script in our head and apply it to a situation. That works fine when the situation is simple, like how to behave in a restaurant. But if the situation is unfamiliar, this process doesn’t work at all.

That is Blake’s predicament. She wants Hallmark Moments, and she has a picture of one big, happy family. She will not accept the knowledge her boyfriend has based on his lifetime of experience.

Something else is at play here as well: we tend to blame victims and discount what they say. Researcher Melvin Lerner conducted many experiments in which two people worked at a task, with one of them being paid and the other unpaid. Who got paid was entirely random, yet outside observers consistently said the paid workers had performed better.

The moral of these experiments is people twist facts to make victims seem to deserve their fate. Lerner concluded that every adult bright enough to tie his shoelaces knows the world isn’t just, yet our mind wants us to believe we live in a just world. This is a coping mechanism which allows us to overlook the undeserved suffering we see.

This mechanism helped Blake ignore her boyfriend’s plight. Rather than dealing with reality she tried to force her own script on reality. She couldn’t see that only someone with the fortitude of an Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller’s tutor, could have controlled this woman.

So Blake broke faith with her boyfriend by patronizing his victimizer. What she did is a horror. Victimizers know, even if unconsciously, how to start low and escalate their behavior until they gain power. Blake didn’t realize what is wrong with her boyfriend’s mother is much stronger than what is right in her.

People from good circumstances are often defenseless against the wicked. In the end the letter writer ended up not with a devoted husband but with a spoiled relationship. We have sympathy for her, but we have much more sympathy for her boyfriend. His chance for freedom ended.

Not everything is fixable. Sometimes it seems our role in life is to point out to Pollyannas how this world really works.

~ Wayne & Tamara

Authors and columnists Wayne and Tamara Mitchell can be reached at www.WayneAndTamara.com. Send letters to: Direct Answers, PO Box 964, Springfield, MO 65801 or email: DirectAnswers@WayneAndTamara.com. Direct Answers appears in newspapers in the United States, Canada, Australia, the UK, Grenada, Guyana, Spain, Lesotho, South Africa, Antigua & Barbuda, Papua New Guinea, and Kenya.   Direct Answers Archive 2009

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