When I encounter a comment that comes across as offensive, I find myself with two separate questions to sort out: what did the commenter intend, and how am I interpreting it? I often don't arrive at clear answers to either one. Sometimes it'll be obvious that the other person was trying to offend me or at least impose their point of view. Sometimes it'll be equally obvious that I was having a bad day and misunderstood what they said. Sometimes I'll even revisit the conversation years later and come up with a different interpretation.

I was just wondering where your fiancee is now with that offensive comment that led her to quit therapy. Does she, for instance, hold it as good reason to avoid all therapy, ever? As an indication that she'd picked the wrong therapist or that the time wasn't right? As something that she preferred to work on by herself before considering therapy again?

I've never found it especially useful to hear or read that there have to be things in my past that I'm not aware of, that I need to start working on anyway. My experience has been that whenever something is ready to be worked on (or I'm ready to work on it), it'll bring itself to my attention one way or another.

On the one hand I've sometimes appreciated a bit of impartial help with sorting out which of several "somethings" to go after first. I might, for instance, feel I wasn't well suited for some job or living situation I was hoping to fit into (and keep trying to change to fit in better). Sometimes it's taken me a bit of exploring and reconsidering before I've been able to see that I was whoever I was, that the situation wasn't a suitable one for me, and that I'd rather be doing something quite different.

On the other hand I've sometimes gotten myself into unsuitable situations like the above by following the advice of someone who thought they'd be just what I needed.


Here's where I posted one of my favorite quotes about how issues from the past bring themselves to one's attention.