Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
Why does Dora need therapy?
Tiogyr:
--- Quote from: JordanDH on 14 Jun 2011, 07:20 ---Marten and Dora enjoyed each other's company when she wasn't being completely unreasonable, had lots of sex, they seemed quite attached to each other. Why else would Dora be afraid of losing him?
--- End quote ---
Dora wasn't afraid of losing Marten, she was afraid of the emotional rollercoaster that usually accompanies her breakups.
--- Quote ---Why else would Marten be sad when the relationship ended?
--- End quote ---
Marten being sad when the relationship ended really didn't act too much different from Marten on any other day (after he got blackout drunk and got over the hangover the next day). He just relocated in terms of where he spends his free time.
JordanDH:
--- Quote from: Tiogyr on 14 Jun 2011, 07:37 ---
--- Quote from: JordanDH on 14 Jun 2011, 07:20 ---Marten and Dora enjoyed each other's company when she wasn't being completely unreasonable, had lots of sex, they seemed quite attached to each other. Why else would Dora be afraid of losing him?
--- End quote ---
Dora wasn't afraid of losing Marten, she was afraid of the emotional rollercoaster that usually accompanies her breakups.
--- Quote ---Why else would Marten be sad when the relationship ended?
--- End quote ---
Marten being sad when the relationship ended really didn't act too much different from Marten on any other day (after he got blackout drunk and got over the hangover the next day). He just relocated in terms of where he spends his free time.
--- End quote ---
What emotional roller coaster? The emotional roller coaster comes from losing someone you didn't want to lose. And might I direct you to today's issue.
Elysiana:
--- Quote from: Spectreofwar on 14 Jun 2011, 07:34 ---If you had bothered to read the comic, you may have picked up that Dora has ALWAYS had issues. Pushing her to therapy was an event that came after the break-up, because her given reasons for the break-up were the culmination of all her issues affecting not only her life but those around her. THAT requires HELP, if you can't do it alone(and Dora has admitted that she tried to get over her issues; I'm not making this one up, she actually said those words). To give you an actual answer to your OP title: Dora needs therapy because her issues are holding her back in aspects of life that she has stated she wanted to change, which are affecting her in a detrimental way, and she cannot change on her own.
--- End quote ---
This is my biggest thing - it's not that Dora needs therapy now because she broke up with Marten, or because she and Marten weren't a good match. She needed therapy before she even MET Marten. She should not have started dating him before getting past her issues, because they were SIGNIFICANT issues already. I'm not sure where this whole attitude of "Well, it was partly Marten's fault too" is coming from, because it has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not she needs therapy. I repeat - she needed therapy before she met him.
I mean, the basic sequence of events was - Marten pursues Faye. Faye denies Marten. Dora pursues Marten pretty much immediately. Dora constantly accuses Marten of still having feelings for Faye. Dora breaks up with Marten because she knows she can't work past this issue and that it is only hurting the relationship. She KNOWS it is not fair to Marten that he should have to feel the brunt of her insecurities when they're unfounded in reality. She KNOWS she needs help working through it, she just doesn't know where to start getting that help.
A lot of people subconsciously pick relationships that they know may not work because then if it doesn't work they don't have to feel so bad about it. It's a sort of self-affirmation mechanism - "I knew this would happen!" Or they break up with someone first so that they don't have to be the rejected one. Therapy helps people recognize that they are falling into this trap. Once you learn to break the sequence, you can work on changing the outcome. Many people who have never seen any sort of counselor sit there and say, "I don't like how I handle things, but I guess it's just how I am." Those who have been taught to recognize the signs of slippage can say, "I noticed I was falling into the spiral, so I stopped the spiral."
Tiogyr:
Dora needing therapy is an entirely separate subject from the one over whether Marten shares any blame at all in the relationship with Dora getting shitcanned, I agree (that's kind of what I've been saying but people keep missing the point).
Is it cold in here?:
(moderator)
People are mostly saying interesting things and focusing on the comic, but a few comments have veered toward the personal. Remember to criticize and psychoanalyze the characters and not forum members.
(/moderator)
If we pursue the hypothesis that Dora and Marten didn't have enough in common (supportable from the strip), and broke up because of that and not for the reasons Dora gave (speculative, but psychologically plausible), where does that line of thought put us? It means that Dora keeps choosing incompatible partners. That's either bad luck (possible but getting unlikely for someone her age) or the result of an emotional malfunction that leads her to pursue people who aren't good for her. In the latter case, we're back to her needing the help of an expert in human behavior and in leading people to self-insight.
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