[Two Pronged] Why do some happy family memories become painful later in life?

• A letter from a reader named Jan expresses a newfound hatred for boxing, which he associates with complex memories of spending time with his father amidst parental conflict.
• Dr. Holmes and Mr. Baer analyze Jan's feelings, suggesting that his childhood memories of boxing represent both quality time with his father and the underlying turmoil of his family life.

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Rappler’s People section runs an advice column by couple Jeremy Baer and clinical psychologist Dr. Margarita Holmes.

Jeremy has a master’s degree in law from Oxford University. A banker of 37 years who worked in three continents, he has been training with Dr. Holmes for the last 10 years as co-lecturer and, occasionally, as co-therapist, especially with clients whose financial concerns intrude into their daily lives.

Together, they have written two books: Love Triangles: Understanding the Macho-Mistress Mentality and Imported Love: Filipino-Foreign Liaisons.

Dear Dr. Holmes and Mr. Baer,

Everyone is excited about Alex Eala nowadays. I don’t blame them. I, too, would pay hundreds just to see her play in person. Like watching basketball, Filipinos love spectator sports, especially boxing. 

I wonder why I hate boxing matches.

My father used to bring me to such matches because he loved boxing. This was when I was 6-9 years old.

Then, my parents were constantly fighting about my father’s infidelity. It sounded like he did it except when he went to these boxing matches.

I loved spending time with my father then. He was always so busy, or upset because of their (my parents’) fighting. He was different during our “boxing dates.” He was in a better mood and would even joke those nights we went out together.

I remember those nights being so special to me. It was a chance to be alone with him. But now it feels different and I don’t know why.

I would appreciate anything helpful you could tell me…even if it is just theories. It feels like this sudden hatred for boxing is now affecting my mental health. Thank you. 

Jan

Dear Jan,

It may be helpful to look at what boxing represented to you when you were a child and what it represents now that you are an adult.

As a child, the sport offered you two main attractions: the opportunity to have what is now labeled as “quality time” with your father, a precious resource that children cherish in the moment and a memory that warms the heart long after the actual occasions have passed.

These were ideal times when you had your father all to yourself and the two of you were temporarily freed from the constant tug of war between your parents (over your father’s infidelity) that seems to have been a permanent feature of your childhood. Boxing was an oasis of calm in a world of turmoil.

With maturity, however, came the realization that these supposedly innocent outings were not actually as innocent as you had thought. You began to understand the broader context within which these boxing events should be viewed. Once you fully connected the dots, you saw how your father had in fact  used you as a pawn in his endless struggles with your mother and how he used boxing as yet another excuse to be out of the house without your mother.

Boxing therefore became associated in your mind with escaping from the harsh realities of a difficult home life and also highlighted the stark contrast between the two faces of your father: the philanderer who made your mother’s life a misery and your childhood a battleground, on the one hand, and the relaxed joker on boxing nights on the other. Your role in the latter was innocent but your father’s use of you as a foil in his marital woes was deliberate, definitely not in your best interests and a low point in his parenting.

Your current sudden hatred for boxing is of concern. It is not clear why this has surfaced now but as it is affecting your mental health, it should be added to the other issues already discussed and raised with your therapist who will hopefully be able to delve further into the history behind this new development and help you deal with it. 

Wishing you the best of luck,

JAF Baer

Dear Jan:

Thank you very much for your letter and I thank Mr. Baer for answering this letter first, so that now I can jump off from his analysis and move on to mine. To be sure, his analysis is a realistic and possibly accurate rendering of what your boxing dates with your father represented.

My analysis is another interpretation and, admittedly, while realistic, can also be inaccurate. One of the first things we learn as students of the human psyche is that two contradictory qualities can exist in the same person even when discussing the same event!

Take your father’s boxing dates with you. Yes, he may have “used you as a pawn” as Mr. Baer suggests, because this was the only time he was able to leave home without a major fight. So of course he was in an even better mood and was even able to joke with the whole family, HE knew he would be able to escape your mother’s ire and was looking forward to a peaceful time…even if it lasted only as long as the boxing matches did.

But that does not diminish his time with you, Jan. After all,  he chose you, and not your other siblings and/or your mother to be with him. He chose you, and not anybody else, to share this little bit of paradise with you.  

Yes, it would probably mean a lot more to you if you felt his only motive for being with you was because he wanted to. But life is not that simple, and neither you nor he can isolate this joy of being together from all the rancor going on at home. It is even possible that being with him in the stadiums where the matches took place added to the joy of your time together precisely because it was so far away and so different from what you both had at home.

True, he may not have been the strong and stalwart father protecting you from your mom. It is more likely that you both looked forward to these dates more like siblings, laughing about having escaped from the ogre at home. But so what, right? We cannot be all things to all people at all times.  

Sometimes he was the protector, and sometimes he was the companion who joked because like you, he too needed escape from home.

Perhaps you are disappointed because he is, after all, your dad. Perhaps you hoped he would always be the strong one, buffering you from all the bad things in the world. But, again, life doesn’t work that way and many would consider you lucky, because he didn’t walk away from you even when I am sure there were many times he was sorely tempted to.

The English poet, Philip Larkin has a poem that starts:

   “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   
    They may not mean to, but they do. ” 

Transgressive, that, but also true and actually also pretty horrible if that were all there was to it. But Mr. Larkin adds, in the second and third stanza, a reason for this: 

“But they were fucked up in their turn…   
…(because) Man hands on misery to man ” 

So you see, dearest Jan, your father did not fool you on purpose…(perhaps) he even did the best he could do under the circumstances he was in.  

Philip Larkin has another poem, The Arundel Tomb, where the final words are:

“What will survive of us is love”

I hope, unless it is patently and completely false, that what will survive among the memories of times with your Dad is also love.

All the best,

MG Holmes  

– Rappler.com

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