Bad Radio Advice

Flipping through the radio dial the other day, looking for relief from bad news and bad music, I happened on the voice of a sweet young thing on a call-in radio advice program. She was telling the radio therapist about the problem she was having with this great guy, her fiancé and live-in lover of six months. It seemed that whenever they were about to have relations, he would insist that she go away and, um, take care of herself, and then he would go ahead and have sex with her. He didn’t really know how to please her sexually, the young woman said, and so they had been following this arrangement, and it troubled her.

The radio therapist, a licensed clinical psychologist, and self-described dispenser of “advice that is compassionate, practical, and substantive”, told the girl she should stop accommodating him, and go buy a book or video to help him get over his shyness or insecurity or whatever was bothering him.

All well and good, I suppose, but this young woman, who giggled nervously throughout the call, was 21 years old, and had known this “great guy” for a year. She was not asked why she was so insecure that she was ready to marry this fellow, and why, for heaven’s sake, she was willing to act as an unpaid concubine for a man so selfish and fearful of intimacy that he treated her as he might an inflatable doll.

Think about this. At the tender and attractive age of 21, she had landed a guy who had absolutely NO interest in a mutually satisfying and intimate romantic relationship. What about when she gets older, and gains a few pounds or wrinkles? What on earth would possess her to think this guy was a catch? And why oh why is this “compassionate, practical, and substantive” radio therapist advising her to put a Band Aid on the whopping problem of insecurity and lack of self-respect from which this young lady so obviously suffered? Instead she was condemned by the therapist to a plan of chasing after an immature and emotionally-stunted dope, with books and videos and no understanding of why this setup ever looked attractive to her in the first place.

Comments

I have to tell you that not all of Dr. Laura's radio advice is sound. She told a man that he didn't have the right to lay down family rules for visitors. His nephew was visiting, and his wife didn't want the boy to be a bad influence on her children, so she wanted to discourage video games and certain television shows. They both called in, over the conflict, and Dr. Laura said that he didn't have the right!

[Liz Neville]

To the anonymous person who made the comment, above-- the therapist in question was Dr. Joy Browne, of WOR-NY. Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who you reference, would not only have dressed down the sweet young caller for favoring such a lout, she would have made her realize her own worth by the end of the call-- or at least face up to why she felt she only deserved a lout. Dr. Laura is rarely off in her instincts; I have been listening to her for about ten years; not only can she put her finger on the problem in a minute's time, she is morally consistent and really helpful. I have also heard some of the most compelling therapy one can imagine in the short course of a radio call-in. I must say I find it hard to believe she'd advise a father that he had no right to restrict behaviours in his own home that might be a bad influence on his children.