Undecided

“I appreciate your willingness to see me, even virtually,” Stan begins. He’s a nice looking man who seems anxious, unsure, fidgeting with his fingers, moving in his seat.

“How can I help you?” I ask.

“I just hope you can help me. I want to leave my wife. No, no, that’s not exactly true. I don’t want to leave my wife. I love Paulette. But I have to leave her. I love her and I love my two boys, but I just can’t go on like this. I’m sorry, I know I’m not making any sense.”

“You can say whatever you need to say, however you need to say it.”

“I’m in love with someone else. A man! I can’t believe it. I don’t even know how this happened. I’ve never been attracted to a man before. Or, or maybe I have. I don’t know. But all I know is that I love Frank. I never expected to love Frank, I mean I don’t know if I even liked Frank at first, but then, there it was, he kissed me and I don’t know if I ever felt anything so powerful in my life. So that’s it. I love Frank and I love Paulette. But I can’t keep lying to Paulette. I don’t even know how she hasn’t figured it out. I do everything I can to avoid having sex with her. Not that I mind having sex with her, but it feels like I’m being unfaithful to Frank! Which I know is completely crazy”’ Stan takes a breath. “So that’s the story. Do you think I’m awful?”

“No, of course not. I think you’re in a lot of pain. Can you to tell me a little more about yourself?”

“I’m 38. I’ve been married for 12 years. I have two boys, six and ten. I was supposed to be a physical therapist, but I ended up selling solar panels. I like it. Makes me feel I’m helping people. And the environment. That’s how I ended up in Florida. It’s a good place to sell solar panels. My wife and I are actually from a small town in Ohio west of Cleveland, conservative, Christian area. South Florida was an adjustment, but we’ve learned to love it.” Pause. “‘We’ve learned to love it.’ That’s the problem, ‘we’ has always meant me and my wife. I don’t know. I don’t know if I can leave that ‘we,’ break up my family, have to explain all this to my wife. And to my parents. I don’t even want to think about them.”

 “And if you do think about your parents…?”“They’ll never accept it. I don’t think they’d say they didn’t want to see me again, but I know my mother would cry hysterically and my father would preach endlessly about my going to hell.” Pause. “This whole thing is such a mess. What would I tell my kids? Would my wife keep me from seeing them? No, I don’t think she’d do that. You know, the more I talk about this the more I wonder if I should just leave things as they are, keep lying, keep seeing Frank on the side. Maybe this thing with Frank will just burn itself out. Maybe it’s not love, maybe it’s just lust.”

“Can we talk a little about your sexuality? You said Frank was the first man you’d been attracted to and then you didn’t seem sure of that.”

“I played football in high school. And you know, we’d all be in the locker room, showering, trying to see whose was bigger while pretending we weren’t looking. Sometimes there would be a guy and, I don’t know, I guess you could say I might have been attracted to him, but I didn’t think much about it. I dated girls. I had sex with girls. I met my wife in college, we had sex, we dated a while, we got married and here we are.”

“And how was the sex with girls? With your wife?”

“Good. Good. It was good.”

“But not as good as with Frank?”
“Nowhere near. I never had sex like with Frank. I can see with across the room and all I want to do is jump into bed with him. He was my customer, buying solar panels for his house. At first I thought he was stuck-up, arrogant. Seemed like an awfully big house for one person. When I came by he started asking me to have a glass a wine. And that led to lunch. And that led to sex and where I am today.” Pause. “What do you think I should do?”

“I can’t possibly answer that…”

“What would you say if I was your son?” Stan asks, interrupting.

“What makes you ask that?”

 

“I don’t know. I guess you’re probably about my parent’s age.”

“It sounds as though your concern about what others think makes it hard for you to sort out what you want for you.”

“That’s definitely true.”

“I know you feel a lot of pressure to try and make a decision right now, but I’d suggest that you give yourself some time and that you give us some time to figure out what you really want.”

Cancer

As soon as I open my waiting room door, I can tell that Marsha isn’t doing well. Usually a warm, bubbly woman with a ready smile, today she seems sad, subdued.

“It’s been a bad week,” she says. “I’m not sure I even mentioned this to you before because Bruce was so sure it would be nothing and you know me, I’m more than happy to ignore things until they slap me in the face. Well, I got slapped in the face. Bruce has prostate cancer.”

Oh no, I think to myself, trying to keep my face impassive. My husband had prostate cancer. He died of prostate cancer. Memories flood me. When he first told me. When the radioactive seeds were implanted. When he started hormone injections. The years of the cancer being under control. Until it wasn’t.

“I’m not sure I understand all the details,” she says, “but I guess it’s past the stage of watchful waiting. So now we have to make all these decisions. I mean, I know they’re Bruce’s decisions, but obviously he wants my input. He’s only 58 years old. He’s scared of the surgery, the possibility of impotence or incontinence or both. I don’t much like the idea either. We’ve always had a great sex life. That’s been the glue through our ups and downs.”

58. A long time for the cancer to have to be kept under control. George was in his early 70s when he was first diagnosed. We didn’t want the surgery either. Not only for the reasons Marsha mentioned, but because George had recently had some heart difficulties and I was especially anxious about him having general anesthesia. It was a decision I often regretted. I remember my aunt saying, “Take it out! Take it out! Take it out!”

But this is not my decision. Neither my experience nor my bias should influence Marsha. I think about my book, Love and Loss. Marsha has never mentioned it, so I doubt she’s read it. If she had, she’d certainly know about my experience. Would if influence her? Perhaps. It’s one of the difficulties I considered before writing a book so filled with self-disclosures.

“You look sad,” Marsha says, bringing me out of my reverie.

Obviously my feelings are showing. “Yes,” I say. “I’m sad, sad that you and Bruce have to deal with this pain.”

It’s true. More accurately, it’s half true. I feel sad for Marsha and sad for me. Although I don’t need Marsha’s misfortune to remind me of George’s cancer and its progression, Bruce’s cancer does bring those memories and feelings to the fore once again.

Marsha begins to cry. “It’s so unfair. We’ve just gotten our kids off to college and all the problems we had with Lawrence. I never thought he’d straighten out. But he did. And there’s taking care of our parents who aren’t doing so great either. The sandwich generation! Except now we’re being eaten!”

This is the other side of Marsha. As she said, she’s usually able to ignore difficult things. But when they hit her in the head she’s blind-sided, her defenses fall away, and she’s left drowning in misery.

“It isn’t fair, Marsha. But life isn’t. We never know what will happen. You’re not someone who’s constantly worrying about all the terrible things that might happen and that’s good. But now you’re faced with a very scary, painful situation where it’s not at all clear what path you want to take and what the consequences of that path may be.”

“What would you do if it was your husband?”

Danger, I think to myself. “Well, first I think I’d talk to your doctors. Maybe more than one of them. Get their opinions. Find out what your options are. Weigh them.”

“But what would you do?”

Is Marsha unconsciously picking up that I do have an opinion? Am I stonewalling if I say nothing? Am I stepping outside the bounds of my therapist role if I say anything? Then I realize that prostate cancer is the only disease that would place me in this dilemma. With other cancers I wouldn’t have an opinion. I’m relieved. I feel clearer.

“Marsha, I wonder why you keep asking me for my opinion. I know you’re scared and maybe that makes you feel more in need of an authority figure to tell you what to do. But I’m not an authority here, I’m not an oncologist. I’m certainly here to listen to your pain, your fear, your indecision, but I can’t tell you what to do. I don’t know.”

And I realize that’s true. My husband’s cancer doesn’t make me an expert. I don’t know what Marsha should do. My experience is irrelevant.