But Dora's actions seem like those of someone who's been asked, or asked themselves, which is more important: control, or people.
Presenting a dichotomy like that is odd. "People" seems to be being defined as people other than Dora. Doesn't "people" include Dora? Are not her interests just as important as those of Sven and Faye? Is Dora being offered the same sort of consideration that people seem to be asking of her?
You're presenting a feature as a bug. The whole point of this argument is that
Dora is creating the dichotomy, not others.
She doesn't want to deal with her brother's entitlement issues.
She doesn't want to take the initiative to rebuild the bridges with Faye.
She seems to
need to set the terms of her every interpersonal interaction. With her troubled (bordering on abused) background, this need isn't surprising. However, empathy for her troubles and understanding that Tai isn't exactly brilliant at getting through walls doesn't in any way change the fact that Dora has her own troubles to address.
Dora completely ignored Tai's feelings and didn't even seem to realize they existed.
Tai did the exact same thing to Dora, ignoring her pain and instead implied she needed to lighten up and open up more to two people Dora feels have hurt her.
Just so. In both cases.
Not entirely. As I've already said, Tai was clumsy about it but she clearly recognises that Dora is hurting and wants to help. It's just that Dora is not willing to allow anyone to see her pain and, as always, turns it into anger that she directs at those closest to her emotionally and, therefore, the ones she identifies as the greatest threat to her sense of total self-reliant control.
In Tai's defence, this is probably the first relationship she's been in that has had any emotional depth to it. All her prior relationships seem to have been polygamous and based mostly on lust and social hierarchies in the dormitories. She probably really is feeling her way in the dark in the current situation.
Oh wow, Dora! Yeah, okay, Tai could have chosen a better way to handle this (pushy and tactless is in character for her) but she is right to worry about how defensive Dora has been - not trying to solve problems in her relationships but just trying to edit them out of her life.
I'm not sure how Dora can "solve problems in her relationships" with Faye or Sven. Faye didn't come to work drunk, and drink on the job, because of Dora. Sven didn't become a douche because of Dora either. I'm not saying that some form of reconciliation is impossible, but I don't think either relationship has problems that can be solved.
She does it by reaching out.
Sven is Sven but I haven't seen any evidence of him being 'toxic'. Thoughtless and selfish but he genuinely cares for his sister and, if his timing with Faye sucked,
there is no reasonable cause to believe he knew she and Angus were in trouble. That was just bad luck and I think Dora went off the deep end for no reason other than her entrenched resentment of "the more favoured son".
If Dora had said to Tai something like: "I want to still be Faye's friend but she is in a bad place now and I have to be careful; if the timing is bad, I could ruin our friendship forever," then I wouldn't have blinked. Dora is right to believe that any bridge-building must be when Faye is in the right place, emotionally. However, the way she put it, it made it genuinely seem that she was indifferent about Faye and that the ball is in her court about whether she wants to be Dora's friend. If I were Tai and I heard my SO describe one of their best friends in such a dismissive manner,
I'd be worried too.
In the end, the most important line is: "
Would it kill you to open up a little?" Tai feels that Dora is also editing her out of her life, in emotional terms. No amount of sex can get over a lack of emotional intimacy and Dora not being willing to share her emotions with Tai,
especially after something as traumatic as what happend with Faye, is a bad sign