Dear Manon:

I like this: “Heads would roll if I ever heard any of them or ANY one for that matter insult my husband. I am very protective of those I love”- he is a lucky man and so is every person that you love.

Regarding your husband and how he was/ is treated by his family, you wrote: “My  husband has a PhD. He is an extremely intelligent person… we get along so well, except for this one issue. He will never acknowledge that his sister is being spiteful with the photos… He never wants to make waves. With anyone but with me evidently… My husband has always been the passive peace- keeper… his family treated him with complete disregard for most of his life. His brothers were ‘geniuses’.. They used t call him ‘Fat Al’ when he was a chubby kid and teenager… Hence the cognitive dissonance between us. He doesn’t have that protective instinct”.

My thoughts this morning: your husband, as a child, very much had a “protective instinct”. There was spite in his home, between his parents, between parents and siblings. So protectively, he closed his eyes to the spite and removed it from his awareness.  This closing of the eyes is the “cognitive dissonance” you mentioned.

As a child he had to survive his home (as do so many of us, including you).  It is very threatening for a child to be aware that his parents or siblings (uninterrupted by parents) intend to hurt him,  out of spite. So he closed his eyes to their spite. Fast forward, he still does.

It is this protective instinct in childhood that leads to many intelligent and even very intelligent, accomplished adults to be blind so to speak to what is so obvious to others.

anita