Never Teach A Pig to Sing

Dan and Mary have been married for 32 years. They married young and innocent...and from the rural culture. She came from a home where the man was the master of the castle and he came from a home where father knew best...even when he was wrong. I met them when they had been in retirement for several years and lived in the country. Dan retired from his industrial management job where he was the boss. Unfortunately, it was the bipolar disorder that followed his head injury caused by an accident at work that led to his early retirement. He planned to work another ten years and retire in his "old age." Not only did the head injury leave him with a mood disorder and limited physical function, it also magnified his "dominant" personality. What Mary found herself dealing with by the time I met them was the haughty, demanding "Archie Bunker" type man she had learned both to tolerate and manipulate with almost no inhibition, poor memory, and stumbling coordination. The farm they had bought when their son graduated from high school was supposed to be a place to relax, raise some fun livestock and "piddle around." No such luck. Dan was a terror on the small tractor they had and Mary often had to sneak behind him to re-do many tasks. On top of that, Dan's spotty memory made for arguments that went on and on because he would either forget what he said or did or rewrite history. Mary had become fed up and just wouldn't give in any more. She would continue to argue...and argue...and argue. After spending much of a session trying to redirect from rehashing the argument, I had no choice, it was time for some BS Therapy

Moral: "Never Teach a Pig to Sing. It doesn't work and it Annoys the Pig."

Dan had always been the South end of a North-bound horse and Mary knew that. His Head injury and the resulting mental illness and personality changes had only made that more entrenched and difficult. Mary, too, had a hard head. She had raised kids and made it through 32 years with a man others might call difficult. She had been through the early years of his illness and the grief that came with retirement and manifest mostly as anger and irritability. She knew he could be tough to deal with. Yet, she would engage in these power struggles that would go on for hours and hours and hours. Many times, she would end them by threatening not to drive him to town or hiding the keys to the four-wheeler as punishment. She seemed to have no clue that not only was she NOT winning the arguments, but she was wasting a huge amount of energy to do so. In the process, she was also giving Dan more fodder to throw back at her at the next conflict. He would come in with more to irritate her and make her look silly. She would come in more frustrated. He was such a PIG! (and he just wouldn't sing!) Never, never teach a Pig to sing. It doesn't work and it annoys the pig!