"Hello everyone- "I wanted to see what everyone thinks of the following scenario related to a good friend of mine, we'll call him Bob, in keeping with Stefan's favorite name for pseudonymous people. This is a bit long-winded I know but its an issue I'm still trying to wrap my head around that I'm sure you'll find as perplexing as I do and it involves a lot of the same philosophical principles and precepts that Stef tackles in my favorite episodes, listener call-ins. I appreciate in advance your time and consideration. Maybe with your feedback I can be of service to my friend Bob and his wife somehow. Let's get right to it: "Bob has known Jane for about 2 years now. They courted for about a year and a half and have been married now for 8 or 9 months now. From the very beginning of their relationship, Bob and Jane have had deep and meaningful conversations about their past, their values, their goals in life, etc. and were pretty well-aligned in all manners. They were in premarital counseling for about a year before they were married to address how childhood and family of origin issues might shape the dynamics in their relationship and they have worked fastidiously to recognize when they are "pushing each other's trauma buttons", so to speak and how to more effectively communicate their wants and needs with each other. "Their arguments, as they've both told me, are infrequent and have never escalated into physical aggression towards the other, they've never yelled at or threatened each other, and there has never been any instance whatsoever of infidelity or abuse of any kind. Many people from the outside, myself included, have remarked how genuine their connection seems to be, how dutifully they seem in their commitment to each other and how happy they seem to be together. "Like it is for many married couples, their first year of marriage has been quite challenging. Both have had some difficulties navigating family of origin issues, such as Jane's divorced parents and how her often meddlesome stepmother can be divisive in pitting Jane's mother and father against each other. Such behavior angers and saddens Jane, who in these circumstances, finds herself re-experiencing old wounds from her parents' particularly contentious divorce when Jane was a teenager. Bob is not without family of origin drama of his own. I know more about Bob's childhood as I've known Bob a lot better and for longer than I have Jane, but I know he was often subject to his mother's wild vacillations in mood along with torrents of insane verbal abuse when he was a child. Interestingly enough, Jane's and Bob's fathers both are quintessential Boomers straight out of a 4chan meme, often enabling the bad behavior of their wives with a dearth of philosophical complexity on display in their unironic use of the cringe phrase "happy wife, happy life". Passive, weak fathers both, but contrasted to Bob's disdain and disconnection from his own father, Jane has quite a close, borderline emotionally incestuous attachment to her father as from what it sounds like, she would often assume the role of emotional support child to her father during the divorce. This was an issue previously brought up for discussion by Bob in premarital counseling, as he had some misgivings originally if, upon marriage, Jane would indeed accept him as the paterfamilias or stay loyal and enmeshed to such an unhealthy degree with her father. Jane promised him that it was the former, though the doubt still lingered in Bob's mind. There were several conversations that the couple had about the fact, incomprehensible as it was to Bob (and me tbh), that Jane was 31 years old at the time she met Bob, had never had a relationship and this didn't seem to be much of a concern to her father. Bob confided when they first started dating to me how strange it was to him, especially in the modern Tinderfied dating world, how a woman as fit and pretty as Jane could be a 31 year-old virgin and suspected her fa