Denial

As soon as I open the door I know that a different Rita is waiting for me today. Instead of her usual bubbly, sometimes false cheery self, I see a woman on the verge of tears who looks up at me beseechingly. 

Seated in my office, Rita begins. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I know I’m not stupid and I know I’m a 52 year old woman, so I don’t know why this is hitting me so hard. But I had no idea, absolutely no idea.”

I first thought Rita was referring to her husband Henry’s infidelity, but since it has been several months since she found out about his long-term affair, I assume she is referring to a more recent event. I wait.

“My parents are getting a divorce. They’re in their seventies! I couldn’t believe it.”

“I can understand being shocked about a decision that came out of the blue.”

“But that’s just it. It didn’t come out of the blue! My mother couldn’t believe I hadn’t known. She told me my father was unfaithful to her their entire marriage, that they fought about it constantly.”

Now it’s my turn to be surprised. Rita had always described her parent’s marriage as idyllic. She said that’s what made Henry’s betrayal even more disturbing. She’d never been personally close to anyone who dealt with infidelity.  

“I feel like I’m going crazy. I called my sister – my sister who’s younger than me - and she knew! She said they always fought about it! I asked her why we never talked about it. She said we’d literally put our blankets over our heads and guessed we did that figuratively too, like we didn’t want to think about it.”

“That’s a lot to take in. Maybe we should start with what you find the most disturbing about all these new revelations.”

“I don’t know. All of it. That I had no idea. How did I do that? Did I do that in my marriage too? Was I blind to my husband’s affair? Did he have other affairs I have no idea about? I feel as though I’m going in circles. My head feels like mush.”

“I guess one thing we know is that you have a striking ability to not know, to not see what you don’t want to see.”

“But why? Why can’t I know?”

“I guess it felt too intolerable to know.”

“But I can’t live my life like that! It’s a tremendous handicap. It’s like being divorced from reality.”

“I agree, but I think the question we need to ask ourselves is why you felt the need to deny what was right in front of you. You need to understand, not to beat yourself up.”

She sighs, but remains silent, looking dazed and confused. 

I think about denial as a defense. It works as long as it works, but when it breaks, reality smacks you in the face, hard.

“What do you feel about your Dad’s infidelity now? How do you feel about them divorcing?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t gotten there yet.”

“Okay, so tell me where you have gotten.”

“Trying to remember the past. Trying to remember them arguing, trying to remember putting my head under the covers.”

“What would you have felt if your parents divorced then, when you were a child?”

“That wasn’t possible! It’s couldn’t happen!”

“So let’s assume for a moment it was possible. What would you have felt?”

Rita stares at me wide-eyed, shaking her head, repeating, “It couldn’t happen, it couldn’t happen.”

“Rita, see if you can find your feelings,” I say gently.

She continues to stare at me until she starts sobbing. Then she buries her face in her hands.

“No, no,” she moans. “I’m all alone, left. I won’t make it. I can’t make it.”

I remain silent, respectful of her feelings as the scared, vulnerable child.

“A family, a unit,” she says between her sobs. “We were one or nothing. Lost, adrift, floating, nothing.”   

“Sounds pretty scary. I can certainly understand not wanting to know something that would lead to such catastophe.”

“But it’s not rational,” she says, quickly shaking her head as if trying to wake from a nightmare.

“No, it’s not rational, but that doesn’t mean it’s not how you felt and it’s how you felt that matters.”

Silence.

“I suddenly started thinking of my husband. Do I feel the same way about him? Do I feel there’d be nothing if I left him? Is that why I’m not leaving him?”

“Those are really good questions and I’m sure we’ll return to them next hour and for some time to come,” I reply, while thinking of the power of the unconscious, about Rita choosing a womanizer like her father without even consciously remembering that he was a womanizer.

Unmoored

“You’re sure you don’t know my husband?” Francis Browning asks again.

“Yes, I’m sure,” I reply. “You made it very clear on the phone that your husband is a psychologist in town and I definitely wouldn’t have agreed to see you if I knew him in any way.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just so hard to trust anyone anymore. I can’t even believe I’m willing to see a psychologist myself, but I have to talk to someone or I’ll go crazy. Sometimes I can’t stop crying. Other times I walk around the house screaming. I can’t believe he’d do this. Why drag me all the way here only to dump me?” Francis digs her fingernails into her hands, her face contorted with rage.

I remain silent.

“I’m from Kansas,” she says. “A Kansas farm girl. People in south Florida laugh at me. They don’t think anyone lives in Kansas. And they don’t believe anyone works a farm. I don’t know where they think their meat and produce come from. Just magically appear in the grocery store I suppose. I hate it here. People are incredibly rude, unfriendly. I never wanted to come here. But Richard loved it when we vacationed here, the sun, the manicured lawns, year-round golf. He kept saying as soon as the girls went off to college we’d move. I thought he was just talking. I went on with my life. It wasn’t a very exciting life, but it was my life. I kept busy with my friends and volunteer work. I never finished college. I thought I was so lucky that someone like Richard would want me. Ha! Guess that’s a joke.”




As Francis talks, I think about how painful my move from Ann Arbor, Michigan to south Florida was, how gut-wrenching it felt to leave my friends, my practice and my home, how alien south Florida seemed. I, too, left because of my husband, but we had a warm, loving relationship and although I sometimes felt angry, I knew the move was necessary. Francis’ story obviously has a different trajectory.

“So the girls went off to college,” Francis continues, “and Richard started making plans to move. I kept asking him if he was sure he wanted to start over again in his fifties, but I

guess I never gave him much of an argument.”

“Did you tell him you didn’t want to move?”

“He knew. But I always did what he wanted. He didn’t expect much opposition from me. So we moved and I hated it as much as I thought I would. Moving into a country club community was my idea of a nightmare. I don’t play golf or tennis. I don’t play cards, which kind of eliminates everything women do in those places. Richard was happy as a clam – working hard, I have to give him that – involved in all kinds of stuff at the club. He started watching his weight, coloring his hair. Wanted me to do all that too. Said I looked dowdy. I should have known. I should have realized he’d start looking elsewhere. I should have tried harder, done what he said.”

“You seem to go from being really angry with your husband to blaming yourself.”

“Yeah. Maybe if I’d done the things he’d asked we’d still be together. But too late now. Moved in with another woman. In the same club of course. Talk about being laughed at. I keep asking myself why I don’t move back to Kansas.”

“That’s a good question. Why don’t you?”

“Partly it’s shame. Not too many people back home know what’s happened. The girls of course, but I haven’t wanted to tell my friends. And I don’t know. I guess it’s silly, but I like Richard to know I’m still around, still watching what he’s doing, like I’m here and you can’t get rid of me so easily.”

“You know, Francis, I’m left wondering what you want for your life. What you’ve ever wanted for your life. You’ve spent your life wrapped around your husband and what he wants. What about you?”

Francis glares at me. “Typical career woman! You sit there talking down to me and telling me about my choices.”

I’m taken aback by Francis’ venom. Am I a stand-in for her husband? For the other woman? 

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I just don’t know what to do with my rage.”

“You never have to apologize for your feelings here, Francis.”

“I never wanted to be a career woman. I wanted to be a wife and mother and look where that got me. I’m being punished for getting what I wanted. You’re not supposed to want. You’re just supposed to accept whatever God gives you.”

“It’s hard not to want, Francis.”

“Maybe. But wanting and getting burned is no better.”

Betrayal

Twenty-seven year old Carla sits crying in my office, her eyes red, shredded tissues in her lap. “I can’t believe it happened again,” she says. “I thought Martin was different – kind, sensitive. I couldn’t imagine him being unfaithful. I don’t understand why this keeps happening to me!”

And that, I think to myself, is exactly the question. Carla is tall, attractive, shapely, smart, articulate, funny and yet Martin is the third man who’s been unfaithful to her. For the moment, however, Carla needs to deal with the immediacy of her pain.

“I thought I’d surprise him,” she continues. “Bring us Thai food for lunch. I knew he’d be writing. Or I thought he’d be writing. I didn’t even register the strange car in his driveway. Until he didn’t answer the door. I rang and rang. My stomach started to get all queasy. He finally answered in a bathrobe, tried to make some feeble excuse, but I’m not stupid. I threw the food at him and ran. I wanted to key the girl’s car as I went, but I knew that would be dumb. So here I am, betrayed again. What’s wrong with me?” she asks, beseechingly. 

Odd, I muse, I had a similar experience with a man I dated 40 years ago, showing up at his door only to find him with another woman. I was both devastated and enraged. But that was a long time ago, those feelings long gone, not distracting me from my role as therapist.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you, Carla. But I do think it’s important to understand why this scenario does keep repeating. What are your thoughts?”

“I don’t know!” she responds, crying. “My parents have been together for over 40 years. I’d be shocked if my father ever cheated on my mother.”

“And your mother?” I ask.

“What!?” she says, furrowing her brow. “You’re asking if my mother ever cheated on my father?” she asks, incredulously.

I nod. 

“That’s impossible. My mother was the least sexual person around.”

“Is that because she’s your mother or …?”

“My mother pulled away when my father tried to be affectionate. And sometimes I could hear them arguing. He was frustrated.”

“So why are you so sure he was never unfaithful?”

“Because he wasn’t that type.”

“Obviously, Carla, I’m not saying that your father was unfaithful. I have no idea. But I do think it’s interesting that you’re so convinced he wasn’t.”

Shaking her head, she says, “My father stressed the importance of good moral values, insisted we go to church, lectured us on being good people. He’s a wonderful man.”

I’m surprised by Carla’s naiveté. I think of the people I’ve known – both men and women - who were unfaithful to their partners. Many of them were good people.    

“Two questions. Do you think only “bad” men are unfaithful? And are there similarities between the men you’ve dated and your father?”

“Actually, Martin reminded me of my father. He even looks a bit like him.” She smiles uncomfortably. “You think I have an Oedipal thing going with my father?”

“What do you think?”

Carla looks out the window. After a pause she says, “My father put up with a lot from my mother. She’s difficult, demanding, cold, particularly to him. He dotes on me. I love him a lot so, yes, maybe I’m kind of in love with my father.”

Well, I think to myself, that opens up lots of possibilities. Does Carla choose unavailable men so that she can remain faithful to her father? Is her father more of a womanizer than she thinks and is she choosing men who are like her father? And if they’re like her father does the relationship feel incestuous so that she unconsciously does something to subvert it? If her mother is cold, is she choosing men like her mother to try to win in the present that which she lost in the past? Does she try to be not her mother and end up being too smothering and intense? Lots of questions, none of which will be answered today.

“How do you feel, Carla, about being kind of in love with your father and how does it affect your relationships?”

“I don’t know. Right now, all I know is that I’m sad. I’ve lost again.”

“As in you’ve lost Martin and lost your father again?”

“I haven’t lost my father,” Carla declares emphatically.

“Except that he’s with your mother, not you,” I respond gently.

“Oh, I get it. I don’t know. This has gotten too Freudian.”

“It’s time for us to stop for today, but you opened up lots of things today and I’m sure we’ll get back to them.”