Cockroaches, Relationships, and Other Scary Things

Uh oh. I'm afraid that I unintentionally invited a visitor into my Cabarete apartment sometime over the past week. He was so inconspicuous that I hardly even noticed him until I opened the bottom cupboard to reach for a tupperware container for my leftover dinner, and saw a very very large bug. Of course my reaction was to freak out, forget about the tupperware for the food, and instead toss my leftover dinner out with the trash. I hadn't seen him again until Stephen, the owner's friend stopped by last night to check out my broken water pump which used to provide me water from a 5-gallon container stored in the cupboard under the stove. My cockroach appeared once again when Stephen was removing the water container from the cabinet in to try a 'spare' pump. Stephen promptly informed me that the owner had never housed cockroaches before, and implied that he wouldn't be happy about it. Oh shit! Could I have just welcomed a colony of enourmous cockroaches into this beautiful, new, clean apartment that I've been allowed the pleasure of staying in for an entire month? This morning before and after surf, I looked all over for the intimidating insect, but he was nowhere to be found. I then decided that I must take whatever necessary actions and remove the small beast from the apt. so I stopped by the market, and bought roach poison. When I got home, I decided to make one last thourough search before having to deliberately poison the insect, and to my surprise I found him! He wasn't very happy about it, but I trapped him in a tupperware container (one which I'm sure he'd been hiding in), took him for a stroll down the beach in the opposite direction as Stephen's apt., and set him free. I don't know if this was the right location to set him free, but I figured that he'd probably find a nice new home somehow. He seemed very resourceful to me. While walking along the beach together, I decided that if I were not staying in someone else's place, I could indeed live with the beetle-bug-looking guy easily enough. Why did I freak out when I saw him for the first time anyway? He certainly wasn't harming me in any way, right?

I decided that it's the same reason some humans are uncomfortable with relationships, some of being alone, some of change, or trying something that we've never tried before. It's the fear of being out of our comfort zone - of changing the way we have been trained to perceive situations or things throughout our lives.

My question then is this (and know that at least a portion of this inquiry has been sparked by my interest is seeing Gov. Spitzer's wife standing by his side as he resigned due to his recent 'mishap' with a prostitute): Why is it easier to eliminate the 'pest' - the cockroach hiding in the cupboard, an intimidating wave, the mistrust, the personality trait which happens to be trying our patience, or perhaps the public appearance beside a cheating husband knowing that your life partner has deceived and publicly embarassed you by soliciting the services of one or more young prostitutes (this courageous act is certainly not for the wishy-washy or weak at heart!) which makes us uncomfortable, rather than just accepting that it's there, and respecting it for what it is, knowing it's intention is not to harm us? Bug or beau....