Infidelity

Jeffery throws himself in the chair across from me looking more disheveled and distraught than his usually calm, poised presentation of a mid-forties successful financial advisor.  

“I couldn’t wait to get here. I almost called and asked if you had a double session available today or any more sessions available today at all. Do you?”

Thinking about how reluctant Jeffery has been to increase his therapy sessions to more than once a week, I say, “I’m sure I can see you later this afternoon, but first why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

“My wife told me she wants us to have an open marriage.”

Many thoughts go through my mind, including the sarcastic, ‘so now the shoe’s on the other foot.’ Instead I say, “Her request obviously disturbed you.”

“Hardly difficult to figure that out. Can you imagine?! My wife! The prissy little woman who left me begging for sex.”

“Jeffery, what’s so disturbing about her asking for an open marriage?”

“That’s a dumb question.”

“You could look at her request as freeing you to see as many women as you wanted without having to sneak around.”

“But she could also see as many men! In fact, she already has. She told me at first she wanted to get back at me for all the women I saw on the side – even though I never admitted to seeing any other women. So she went online and started going out on dates when she knew I’d be out. And then she’d have sex with them. It almost made me throw up to hear that. And then she told me she’s come to enjoy it and wants to be able to do it openly. Ugh!”

“Jeffery, I know you might think these are dumb questions, but why is a man who never followed his marriage vows, so disturbed about his wife wanting the same freedom?”

“It’s not the same. She said she did it because she wanted to get back at me, meaning she must have been angry at me.”

“And does that give you an idea about your own motivation?”

“I wasn’t angry at my wife.”

“’A prissy little woman who left me begging for sex’ doesn’t sound not angry, but maybe it’s more than just your wife you’re angry at.”

“That theory again. I’m angry at my mother for dying and leaving me and therefore I’m angry with all women. I don’t buy it.”

“Can you think seriously for a moment why you might not buy that theory?”

“It’s just a cliché.”

That’s not a moment’s worth of thought, I think. Then I realize I’ve had several sarcastic thoughts this hour. Am I angry with Jeffery for being unfaithful? But I’m not angry with other unfaithful patients. Am I feeling Jeffery’s conscious or unconscious anger at me? Certainly a possibility. Am I angry with Jeffery for not accepting anything I offer be it a question, an interpretation or a request? Another possibility.

“Have you ever noticed Jeffery that you rarely take in anything I offer?”

“For heaven’s sake, my wife just told me she wants an open marriage and you want to talk about us.”

I think, ‘well, there’s an example,’ but I swallow that sarcastic response and say, “Perhaps there’s a connection between the two, Jeffery.”

“What!?” he says, roiling his eyes towards the ceiling.

“I wonder, Jeffery, if the reason you feel angry with women is that you’re afraid of being dependent on them, of needing them.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Again, I’m going to ask you to think about what I just said and to try and take it in.”

“It doesn’t make sense to me,” he responds immediately.

“Okay. Let me ask you something else. Do you still want that second session today?”

“What!? You’re more scattered than I am. If it’s going to be like this, no, no I don’t want it.”

“I think you’re afraid of having to rely on women – particularly your wife and me - because either you’re afraid you’ll lose us or become so dependent on us that you’ll feel the extent of your own neediness. And if you reject my idea without considering it you’ll have proven my point.”

Jeffery laughs. “I guess I can’t win.”

“It depends what you want to win,” I say very seriously. “If you want to get to the place where you can have close, meaningful relationships with women, you can definitely win.”

“And what would I need to do to make that happen?”

“I guess you could start by accepting that session later this afternoon.”

“That was a trick.”

“No, it wasn’t a trick. When you were extremely distressed you wanted to see me as much as possible, but once you were here, you had to reject your desire to rely on me by refusing the second session, just as you’ve rejected coming more than once a week.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll come in later this afternoon.”

“I’m glad.”   

The March

“I finally went to dinner at my parent’s,” 19 year old Bethany says dejectedly. “It was pretty bad. They just won’t let up. ‘I can’t believe you lied to us, going to the Women’s March on Washington without even telling us. If we hadn’t called and talked to your roommate we would never have known. What if something had happened to you? We didn’t even know you were gone.’ Blah, blah, blah. As if that was the issue. I bet if I went to the Trump Inaugural they would have been thrilled – even if I hadn’t told them. It’s such bullshit. They did do a bit of, ‘How could you be our child and believe those people have a right to marry.’ Or, ‘Didn’t we teach you that every life is sacred, especially the unborn, those most vulnerable?’ I thought I’d puke. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.” Pause. “I suppose you’re thinking, ‘I told you you should have told them.’”

“I don’t remember telling you you should have told them,” I say, surprised.

“You asked me why I didn’t tell them, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but that was a question meant to help you look at why you do or don’t do whatever.”

“Well, the answer’s pretty obvious. If I tell them I get all this shit. Just like I did.”

“And what did you say when you got all this shit?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Yeah. What am I going to say? You can’t argue with them. I just sit there, trying to tune them out, hoping they’ll stop sooner than later.”

“And why do you feel you can’t argue with them?”

She raises her eyebrows and snorts. “I don’t mean to be nasty, but how long has it been since you were 19?”

I smile inwardly. Although it’s been quite a while since I was 19, I do clearly remember the arguments I had with my parents, most especially my father. Not about politics. There are values were pretty similar, but often about psychology and science. My father was angry, dogmatic and unrelenting. For years, I argued and argued with him about dreams, about the cause of mental illness, about the unconscious, until I finally gave up. Then I was like Bethany, sitting at the table saying nothing, hoping he’d stop sooner than later. On the other hand, I never, ever stopped battling my father’s vicious temper, trying to put a clear limit how he could treat me. I bring myself back to my patient. “I get that it can be difficult to argue with your parents when you’re 19, but I’d like to understand specifically why YOU can’t argue with your parents, even at 19.”

She sighs. “First, they have the money. If they get mad enough, there goes college, plus whatever else.”

“Would they do that? They sound pretty determined for you to get an education, pretty invested in it.”

“They are.” Pause. “Especially my Dad. But sometimes I think my Mom believes I’m being corrupted by college, too liberal you know. And, I don’t know. This may sound weird, but I’m not sure that my Mom really wants me to succeed, like maybe she’s jealous or something. Like she never went to college, so why should I.”

“So are you saying you’re afraid your mother might undermine you?”

“I never thought of it that way, but I guess so. If I gave her any ammunition. Like the Women’s March.”

She pauses.

“I need to ask you something. What did you think about the Women’s March?”

“I’ll answer that in a minute, Bethany, but first I want to ask you something. Why did you ask that question right at this moment?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it and just felt I had to ask.”

“Well, I have a thought as to why you had to ask right then. You were talking about your mother feeling threatening, dangerous and I wonder if you suddenly felt I might be dangerous too and had to check that out.”

“Are you?” she says quietly.

“No, Bethany, I’m not dangerous.” I could tell Bethany I was at the Women’s March too, but decide that might too greatly diminish the tension around the issue of whether difference between two people, perhaps especially two women, is inherently dangerous. “I suspect that our politics might be pretty similar, but even if it wasn’t, I’d still be on your side, still wanting you to have your own voice and make your own way in the world.”

You're Back

“I’m really glad you’re back,” Christine says, her eyes filling with tears. “I know you were only gone a week, but it’s been a hard week. I thought I was more prepared, more ready to deal with my parents this time, but I don’t know, I guess it was the holidays. It was awful. I felt sorry for my girls. They were so looking forward to Nana and Poppy coming for Christmas and it was such a disaster. My parents never stopped fighting, my mother never stopped telling me what I was doing wrong, most particularly as a mother and, of course, as someone who couldn’t keep my husband from straying and my father just got more and more depressed.”

“I’m sorry, Christine. It does sound awful and so disappointing.”

“Yes, that’s exactly right, terribly disappointing. I guess I thought since we’d been working so much on my parents these days, I’d be able to handle them differently or be less affected by them or something.”

“So it sounds as though you’re saying that you’re disappointed in me too, in our work together.”

“No. I don’t think so. I was disappointed that you weren’t here to bounce things off of, to maybe give me some ideas of how to handle things differently.”

Although Christine’s denial doesn’t convince me, I let it go for the moment. “For example,” I say. “Can you give me an idea of what you thought you could have handled differently?”

“There are so many things. How I could have gotten them to stop fighting. How I could have stopped my mother from being so critical of me. How I could have stopped her from being critical of my girls.”

“All right, let’s look at those three things which don’t all strike me as the same. Could you have gotten them to stop fighting? If I’m not mistaken you’ve been trying unsuccessfully your whole life to get them to stop fighting.”

Christine looks startled. “Oh, right. One of the things I need to give up on. I forgot. I can’t keep hoping for what will never be. I need to accept my powerlessness. I knew you should have been here. But why did I forget? I feel ashamed of myself. Why couldn’t I hold onto that?”

“Seems like you said a lot there, Christine. First, I think you are angry with me for not being here. Then I think you got uncomfortable with your anger and felt ashamed instead. And, I agree we should look at why it’s easier for you to hold onto your feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness when I’m here.”

“I do feel ashamed of myself. We’ve talked and talked about my needing to give up hope with my parents and I just can’t seem to do it.”

“Well, it’s very painful. It means you can never have the parents you want or wanted either now or in the past. It involves mourning for what never was and never can be.”

“I know. I guess that’s why it’s harder to do when you’re not here. If you’re not here and I don’t have my parents – and I sure don’t have my ex any more – I feel all alone. Except for the girls of course, but that’s different.”

“That’s a great insight, Christine.”

“Thanks. But what about the other two things I mentioned, why did you feel they were different?”

“The second one might not be all that different, getting your mother not to be critical of you, but I guess I wondered what it is that you felt when your mother’s so critical.”

“I do feel angry, but I try to pretend it doesn’t bother me and just ignore her.”

“Because?”

“Confronting her only makes it worse.”

“And when she attacks your girls?”

“I guess I do about the same thing.”

I am annoyed by Christine’s passivity. I feel she is leaving her daughters unprotected, just as I felt unprotected by my mother in relation to my explosive father. I tread lightly. “I wonder what message you give your girls when you don’t stick up for them.”

“But I thought I’m supposed to give up hope of ever changing her,” she says plaintively.

“This could just be me, Christine, but I think there’s a difference between accepting there’s no way you’re ever going to change your mother and still giving your girls the message that it’s not okay with you for her to attack them, or you for that matter.”

“That’s confusing.”

“It’s like saying, you know you’re not going to change her behavior but you’re still going to let her – and your girls – know her behavior isn’t acceptable.”

“It scares me.”

“What scares you?”

“I guess her anger.”

“I get that. And perhaps your anger as well.”

“I don’t like all this talk about my anger.”

“I believe you.”

Appeasement

“I won’t be here next week,” Mona begins. “I’m going fishing with my parents.”

I feel disappointed for Mona. I’ve been seeing her for a little under a year, working on her need to separate from her parents. A 30 year old paralegal, Mona works in the law firm where her mother was once senior partner and lives in a house her extremely successful father bought for her. Although Mona was raised by a series of nannies during her early years - her parents busy building a business and developing a career – they now crave her time and attention.   

“I know,” she continues. “We’ve talked about it and talked about it. No, I don’t really want to go. No, I don’t like to fish. Yes, it’s awful being stuck on a boat with my folks for a week. Yes, I wanted to save my vacation time so I could go to Europe.” Pause. “And I’m going fishing.” 

“Do you have a sense of why you made that decision?”

“The consequences of not going are too great.”

“And those consequences are?”

“My house. My job. Little things like that.”

“Do you think your parents would take away your house or your job if you said you didn’t want to go fishing with them?”

“It’s important to them. If I can make them happy, why not?”

“What about what makes you happy?”

“Oh yes. There is that I suppose.”

“What would make you happy, Mona?”

“Being on a desert island somewhere, all by myself.”

“Is that true?” I ask.

“Yes and no I guess. In some ways it would feel like I felt as a kid – alone and adrift – surrounded by my books instead of water. There were times that felt welcoming, peaceful. Other times I felt so, so lonely. All I wanted was Mommy or Daddy to come home and be with me. But even when they were home they weren’t with me. And that was worse.”

“So now Mommy and Daddy have come home to be with you.”

“I suppose.”

Pause.

“You know, I’m not sure that’s true,” Mona says. “I mean, yes, they’re always there. I can’t get rid of them. But I’m the Mommy and the Daddy. I have to take care of them.”

“So you’re still not getting what you need. And you’re certainly not getting what you needed as a child.”

“That’s for sure.”

“But I wonder, Mona, if you keep trying, if you keep trying to get what needed from them. If you keep trying to get them to take care of you as you hadn’t felt taken care of as a child.”

“No doubt. Look what I chose as a profession, a paralegal. Not putting paralegals down or anything, but I know I’m smart, I know I could have been anything I wanted to be – a doctor, a lawyer, CEO of a corporation. But, no, I’m a paralegal and Mommy and Daddy get to take care of me forever.”

“That’s really sad, Mona. You’re saying that you kept yourself from realizing your full potential in your attempt to get what you never got from your parents in the past.”

“It’s worse than that. Because what I get from them now are the same things I was able to get from them as a kid – material things. I never wanted for anything materially. But what I wanted was their time and attention. And, yeah, I suppose I do get that now, but it’s really all about them. I don’t even know why I keep trying.”

“I think you do know why, Mona. You keep trying because inside you there’s a needy dependent little girl who yearns for Mommy and Daddy to be home taking care of you.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“The problem is that you can never make up for that, Mona. The past is past and however much you as that little girl might long for and deserve to have loving, attentive parents, there’s no way to redo that.”

“That’s charming. So what do I do?”

“You - and we - have to work on helping you to mourn that which you never had. It’s hard. It means feeling sad and angry, sad and angry, sad and angry, until you can get to a place of acceptance.”

“Doesn’t sound pleasant.”

“No, it’s a long, difficult process.”

“Meanwhile it will have to wait. I’m going fishing.”   

So Much To Do!

“There’s just so much I have to do. Mom’s sister is coming from LA. Her best friend is coming from New York. I have to get food in the house. The house is such a mess, especially with Mom’s hospital bed in the living room. And there’s Melissa, getting her to school, to swimming, to play dates. I’ve tried to keep her life as normal as possible.”

These words rush from Chelsea the moment she enters my office. She continues:

“I’ve thought about asking Melissa’s father to take her for a while, but I don’t know, I don’t know how she’d feel about being sent away.”

“How do you feel, Chelsea? How do you feel about sending Melissa away? How do you feel about your Mom?” I ask, interrupting the flow.

“I don’t have time to feel. Except for stressed. I’m plenty stressed. There aren’t enough hours in the day. And I don’t want to leave Mom alone. I know the hospice nurse is there, but she’s a stranger. Mom doesn’t know her.”

“Chelsea, can you slow down a bit, can you …”

“I can’t slow down,” Chelsea interrupts. “I don’t have time as it is.”

I’m discomforted by Chelsea’s agitation. I know about anxiety taking over during times of impending loss, being propelled into action to escape the sick feeling in one’s stomach, hoping that doing something, anything will decrease feelings of helplessness.  But it’s possible – in fact, helpful – to remain aware of the ever-present sadness.  Chelsea is using her incessant activity in an attempt to rid herself of her feelings, an impossible task that only increases her anxiety – and mine.

“But you have time here, Chelsea,” I say. “You have time to feel. Your Mom is dying. She’s been living with you for several years. You’ve been her caretaker. You have feelings about losing your Mom.”

“Of course I have feelings,” she replies. “But what’s the point of dwelling on it. And her sister and best friend are coming. I can’t very well tell them not to.”

“Are you saying you’d rather they not come?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want. They want to come see Mom and they certainly have a right to.”

“But you can have a preference, a feeling about their coming, even though you understand their need to say good-bye to your Mom.”

“I guess I’d rather they not come. But they’re still coming.”

I feel myself becoming increasingly sad, although I don’t know why. Is Chelsea becoming more aware of her own sadness? Is she less aware and projecting her sadness onto me?

“Do you know why you’d rather they not come?” I ask.

“It’d be a lot less work.”

“Any other reason?” I persist.

Suddenly Chelsea is still. Her blue eyes fill with tears. “I know this is silly, but I’d rather have my Mom all to myself. I hadn’t thought of it, but I wonder if that’s why I considered sending Melissa to her father. I want it to be just Mom and me, just like it was when I was little. Oh God! I knew I didn’t want to go here! I can’t stand it! I’m not sure I’ll make it without Mom!” Tears stream down her cheeks. She buries her head in her hands, her body wracked with sobs.

My eyes well up. I remain silent, giving Chelsea her time.

After several minutes she reaches for the tissue box, blows her nose and wipes her eyes. “I’m sure I look like a mess.” She pauses. “But I actually feel calmer. Isn’t that weird?”

“No, Chelsea, not weird at all. You spend a lot of energy running in circles, trying to avoid your sadness. But when you stop and feel the sadness, although it’s very intense, you feel grounded again and you don’t have to be frantically worrying about things that don’t matter much at all.”

“But sometimes I’m not sure I will survive without Mommy,” she says in a whisper.

“I understand that’s your fear.”

“We were so close. It’s even been hard these last few months when she’s really not with me anymore. But I can pretend. I can pretend she knows who I am, that she hears me, that she responds to my voice. And maybe she does. But soon I won’t even have that. I don’t want to start crying again. I have to go soon anyway. Oh, I can begin to feel myself starting to rev up.”

“Good that you recognized that.”

“But better to be running around like a whirling dervish, than to be afraid I won’t survive without Mom.”

“Well, hopefully we can help you feel less like a helpless child who can’t survive without your mother. I’m sure you’ll miss her and grieve a lot. But you will survive.”