Misery

[Beer_Nut]

I have just been watching parts of season 6 again and I was wondering what people thought of Spike's comment that Buffy was addicted to misery.

To me this is an interesting concept since eamples can be drawn on from several seasons. Personally I think that Buffy was somewhat in love with misery since in many cases she placed herself in the path of misery for no truly apoparent reason. I won't go so far to say that Buffy was only happy when she was suffering, but I definitely think that she became accustomed (sp?) to being unhappy and in emotional pain.

What does everyone else think?

 

[ProphecyGirl]

There's definetely a theme throughout the show consisting of her "liking misery".

I don't think she is particulary addicted to it rather she's learned to make a home in it.

A big part of her life is that she is a slayer and therefore no matter what this depressing fact will always haunt her life therefore she has learned to cope and almost feed off the misery of her life to keep her going... Kinda like in Shawshank Redemption when the guys who'd be in jail for such a long them actually learned to love the prison.

Buffy even said it herself in S.4 while talking about Riley. She questioned their normal relationship as compared to the ones where she was miserable and how it was kinda making her bored.

 

[Buffy Summers]

I think particularly in S6 that is right - it's like after she died (again) she didn't feel like she really deserved to be alive...or happy. jmo 🙂

 

[BillieHunter]

Yea...gotta agree...it often seemd almost as if she thought that she deserved to suffer emotionally...she often seemed to put herself in a position that would cause that.

 

[eset]

I think that up until she died (the second time) seeking out misery was more of a defense mechanism. She seemed to expect bad things would happen anyway, so if she sought them out, they wouldn't crash on her all at once and unexpectedly. It was almost as though she felt it wouldn't hurt so much if she knew itwas coming and, in some cases precipitated it.

After "Bargaining", though, I think her reasons shifted. She was in so much pain emotionally that she didn't know how to deal with it. She became like people wo indulge in self-mutilation, trying to block out the emotional pain with physical pain, in the hopes that if she could cut deep enough, everything else would just float away. That's why she went after Spike, and fostered an incredibly abusive relationship with him, and also why she closed off from her firends. Even though she knew they were the only ones who could help her out of her depression, she also knew that opening up to them would also open her up to more pain and anguish than she was prepared to deal with.

She once asked Spike why he was always around her when she was miserable, and he replied that that was when she was alone, and that continued into the sixth season. Even though she now sought him out, not vice versa, she did it because she had closed herself off and was more alone with her firends than she had been before without them.

 

[Kazby]

I noticed that in the first two seasons she was really happy most of the time, and then after that she just kinda slowly (as everyone kinda said) got addicted to misery. I think that might be because since she's the slayer and her life is really hard, she just kinda figured "why am i trying to make my life something good when I know that it's really not what I wanted it to be?". So maybe she just kind of let misery take over and then like you said Beer Nut she just kinda got accustomed to it once that all happened to her.
That's just my theory though...

 

[JustAnnie]

I think she likes feeling miserable. I think all people like feeling miserable from time to time. Everybody likes being able to feel sorry for themselves, and it's easy to fall into that path. The harder your life is, the more you can feel sorry for yourself. So maybe Buffy makes her life harder then it is cos of that. I don't think it's on purpose though, but maybe she just can't stop it.