This Lois is badly damaged. I know, she's faced a great deal of adversity in her life, most of it when she was really too young to handle it, but she's not doing the one thing she needs to do to resolve these issues in her past.
She needs to see a professional and get some real help.
All she's done so far is paper over the cracks in her life. She's never actually dealt with the problems.
She's afraid that Clark will leave her because her father left her. She's afraid of taking responsibility for her recovery because her mother forced her to be responsible for Lucy when she was really too young. She's scared of the intimacy of sex because - well, I'm not real sure why, I just know she is.
And it's a crock! She has to work out her past issues, not pretend they aren't there! She has to understand that "giving her more time" is the wrong thing to do! If she waits, she'll learn more and better ways to avoid the real problems in her life (she's done a lot of that already) and that will not resolve the root issues. Alice, please please please help her see that she needs professional help!
Clark needs to tell her the same thing. He didn't "almost rape her!" She would only have been in danger of having sex with her husband if she'd taken off her clothes and kissed him passionately. Even then, he probably would've fallen asleep before anything actually happened. Quit babying her, Clark! She needs professional help!
Tense story. Where's the next chapter?
