Welcome to Ask Scratchy, a monthly column in which the Animaniacs’ top psychiatric mind answers the tough questions for cartoon characters from the four corners of the Earth. To submit a question, email the good doctor at askscratchansniff@gmail.com.
Dear Dr. Scratchansniff,
Oh, I just don’t know what to do anymore! Doctor, all I do is love and love, but these princesses, they just won’t love me back. I don’t want to hurt them! I don’t want them to hate me! I don’t want to keep them within an icy cave in the bowels of my frozen hideaway, forever trapped and unable to enjoy the world outside as they scream and scream and scream and oh, the screaming! I don’t like upsetting the princesses. I love the princesses! I just don’t know what to do.
Help me, Doctor! How can I make the princesses love a king like me?
From the cold depths of my wounded heart,
Gunter is Greater
Guten tag, Gunter is Greater,
Everyone, even the most cold-hearted of us, deserves love. Humans (and humanoid magical creatures) are fundamentally relational. In other words, we develop our senses of who we are and how we relate to other people by doing just that: relating to other people. Our first relationships — the ones we have with our primary caregivers — are perhaps the most important, laying a foundation for how secure or insecure we feel in our world and specifically, in our adult relationships.
If your caregiver knew how to respond to your needs (e.g., know which cry meant hungry, which meant tired and so forth), you will likely have a general sense that the world is safe. You can trust that your actions will be met with appropriate responses from other people. This in the field is what we call a secure attachment style. If your caregiver had a hard time reading your signals (and let’s be honest, infants aren’t so easy to read), you may feel like people can’t be trusted, or that no one understands you. In other words, you’re insecurely attached.
There are generally two types of insecure attachment: anxious and avoidant. Anxiously attached folks tend to get close to others quickly but require lots of attention and reassurance out of fear that their partners will lose interest and leave them. They may go out of their way to keep their partners with them, making partners reliant on them, or capitulating to all of their partner’s needs to keep them happy. Avoidantly attached folks, on the other hand, withdraw, preferring to keep to themselves instead of risking the emotional hurt that comes with romantic and emotional vulnerability. They may have relationships, but never truly open up; some avoid relationships altogether.
Now, I’ve never met you in person, GG, but it seems to me like you might be rather anxiously attached. You’re desperate to keep a princess, so you do everything you can to maintain that relationship, and when the more conventional methods (like surprising your princess with a bouquet of winter roses) don’t work, you lock them up in icy cages. Anyone who might try to rescue them would have to pry them from your cold, dead hands. You can’t trust that your actions (asking a princess out) will result in your desired outcome (dating that princess).
Now, I do feel for you, GG. Rejection hurts! It makes you feel sad and lonely, and for a person like you — who has as much love to give as you have fear of loss — that rejection must be especially painful. At the same time, I think you need some cold, hard truth to sober your love-drunk self up: You won’t find love by imprisoning princesses.
In fact, more importantly, what you’re doing is very, very wrong. Every person has a right to choose what they do and who they love. A relationship must be founded on mutual trust and understanding, neither of which are possible when you’re robbing your princess of their independence and agency. You’re not allowing them to give their free permission, or consent, to be in a relationship with you. That, GG, is a form of interpersonal violence; in many places that kind of behavior is punishable by law.
You cannot have a real, loving relationship without consent from both partners. How, you might ask, do you know if your partner is consenting to be in a relationship with you? Perhaps one princess laughed at your joke and touched you on the arm. Maybe another winked at you while she rode away on her Rainicorn. While both of these could suggest a princess might be interested in dating you, consent must be given verbally in the form of a resounding, enthusiastic “yes!” It also must be given when the princess is sober (this is why I never understood the idea of picking up dates at bars) and not under any kind of pressure to give that consent (so no threatening, capturing, or otherwise goading, GG).
It’s also important to remember that people can take away their consent even after they’ve given it. Let’s say you ask a princess to be your girlfriend and she says yes. (Hooray!) A week or two later, she changes her mind and does not want to date you anymore. What do you do then, GG? Lock her up? No! You let her go. She has just as much a right to make that choice as she did to choose to date you.
What if you start dating another princess, and you and she love kissing. You’re kissing each other in every nook and cranny of the Ice Kingdom (and quite frankly, it’s grossing everyone else out). One day you two are out and about, kissing here kissing there and she says, “Stop, I don’t want you to kiss me right now.” Do you kiss her anyway? No! You respect her wishes and back off.
I know from experience that women (and men and GNC folks) find consent very sexy. I’ve been told that there’s nothing better than being in a relationship with someone who respects your needs and your boundaries. I know that might be counterintuitive for you, GG, but that’s the truth.
If you can respect other people’s boundaries, GG, you’ll be melting princesses’ hearts all over the Land of Ooo. And das, Gunter is Greater, ist gut.
The Ice King’s Ask Scratchy question was submitted by John Maher.
Ask Scratchy is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Although the character Dr. Scratchansniff is modeled after two psychoanalytic luminaries, Sigmund Freud and Otto Kernberg, this column is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, mental health professional, or other qualified health provider with any questions or concerns you may have regarding a medical condition.
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