After a Year

“It’s been a year since my wife died,” Andrew Solomon begins. “She died of breast cancer. It was a long process. Hard. She fought for as long as she could, but she had an aggressive cancer. She couldn’t beat it. Now, now I have the rest of my life. I’m 65. I guess people consider that young these days,” he adds with a slight smile. “I’m still working, thank goodness. It’s a great distraction. I’m an accountant. I have my own business so can pretty much make my own hours, except during tax season. But I cut down on my clients during my wife’s illness, so I do have more time on my hands.”

Mr. Solomon is a good looking man with wavy white hair, intense brown eyes and a slight dimple in his chin. I wonder what has brought him into therapy at this point, but wait to see where his thoughts take us.

He continues. “My friends tell me it’s time for me to start dating. That I’m young, secure financially, decent looking and that I’ll have women, younger women, flocking all over me. Maybe. But I don’t know. I don’t know that I feel ready.”

“How do you feel about your wife’s death?” I ask.

“Sad. Like there’s this big hole in my life. Don’t get me wrong, Bella – that’s her name, that was her name, hard for me to talk about her in the past tense – Bella and I didn’t have a perfect marriage. We had our fights. And I wasn’t always the ideal husband, especially when our kids were young. I had a couple of affairs. Never felt right about that. We got lots closer after our kids left. And actually we got even closer when she got sick. I guess I realized how much I was going to lose…” He trails off fighting back tears.  

“Sounds like you’re still understandably very sad.”

“But shouldn’t I be better after a year?”

“What do you mean by better?”

“Better, less sad, not so teary, ready to move on. Finished with grieving.”

“Grieving the loss of a loved one is not something we ever finish.”

Mr. Solomon looks startled. “No that can’t be. I can’t stay at this level of pain forever.”

“It’s not that grief doesn’t diminish that, as you said, the level of pain remains as intense, but we certainly don’t stop loving or missing the person we’ve lost.”

“But does that mean I shouldn’t start dating? Maybe I should start dating, maybe that would help with the pain.”

“That’s certainly not a decision anyone but you can make. Some people start dating soon after their partner has died, others wait years, and still others never date at all. There’s not one right answer for everyone.”

“I had a friend who got involved with the woman who eventually became his second wife, a month after his wife died. I thought that was awful. I lost respect for him.”

I flash on what Mr. Solomon said about having affairs earlier in his marriage and wonder if guilt plays into his question about whether or not to start dating. “How would you feel about yourself if you decided to start dating?”

“Bella told me it would be all right with her. I thought that was an amazing gift she gave me, especially since she knew about the affairs, or at least one of them.”

“Sounds like you still feel guilty about your affairs.”

“Yes, yes I do. I know it’s silly. It’s so many years ago. But especially when Bella got sick, I kept thinking how horrible I had been to her. How could I have even looked at another woman when I had Bella this amazingly strong, brave, good, beautiful woman?”

“You know, Mr. Solomon…”

“Please, call me Andrew.”

“You know, Andrew, I wonder if your guilt about those affairs very much affects you in the present, both in terms of how you feel about Bella’s death and also about whether you feel comfortable dating.”

“Why should that be?”

“Well, our pasts always affect the present and we haven’t even talked about your past before Bella – your childhood, your young adulthood. I suspect that guilt may have played a role in your life then as well. And we haven’t talked about why you think you had those affairs. Were you angry with Bella? Were you angry with her attention to your children?”

“Wow! I guess there is a lot there. I thought I was going to come in today, solve the problem of whether or not I should start dating and that would be that.”

I smile. “Therapy is way more complicated than that. It opens lots of questions before you’re able to answer even one.”

To Know or Not to Know

“I have something I need to talk about, but I’m not sure I can,” begins Victoria, squirming in her seat. She is a smart, insightful, vivacious thirty-two year old woman who has been in therapy with me for a little under a year.  

Her words put me on immediate alert, concerned about what secret she might reveal. I remain silent as thoughts race through my mind: Was she raped? Is she an incest victim? Did she shoplift? 

She stares at me, takes a deep breath and says, “OK. I was at a dinner party on Saturday night. There were a couple of therapists there and your name came up. I was surprised. That’s the first time it’s happened. I didn’t know if I should immediately say that I was your patient, but I didn’t. I wasn’t sure I wanted my date to know I was in therapy and I guess I was afraid they might stop talking and I was kind of curious as to what they might say about you. But it was sort of scary too. Like what if they said something bad? I mean they didn’t, not at all. They started talking about the great blog you write. And that you wrote a book too.” Victoria stops and stares at me again.

Feeling as though I’m being scrutinized, I keep my face neutral as I wait for her to continue.

“So the next day I went on line and googled you and looked at your website. I don’t know if I should have done that.”     

“Because…? I ask.

“Because I don’t know if I’m supposed to. Because I don’t know if you’ll be mad at me. And I guess I’m not sure I want to know stuff about you.”

“Lots of reasons,” I say softly. “So what are your thoughts?”

“Have you noticed how I always stare at you? I’m always trying to figure out what you’re thinking, trying to read your body language, trying to know if you’re approving of me.”

“So you’re afraid I’ll disapprove of something you say or do and that I’ll withdraw my caring, just like your mother did.”

“Exactly. I was always trying to read her. She could be so cold. And when she got angry with me for anything – a look, an expression, never mind misbehaving – she was entirely gone, absent. It was awful.”

“And you bring that fear of rejection into this room and our relationship.”

“Definitely. And to other relationships too.”

“That’s why it’s so difficult for you to hold onto a sense of yourself. You too easily become a chameleon, trying to figure out what other people want of you and fulfilling their expectations rather than your own.” 

“So are you mad at me?”

“What do you think?”

“You don’t seem to be. But I still have the feeling it was bad of me to look, as though your life is off limits to me.”

“Was that true with your mother too?”

“Definitely! She was always telling me I should mind my own business, even if I asked her where she was going when she went out. And when she was pregnant with my younger sister I thought she’d kill me when I asked how the baby got there and what happened to her fat stomach.”

I laugh. “Sounds like a smart question to me. But I guess curiosity was forbidden, and sexual curiosity even more forbidden.”

Absolutely. I knew nothing about sex except what I learned from my friends, and you know how accurate all that stuff is.”

“Before we run out of time, I want to make sure we look at what you said about not being sure you wanted to know about me.”

“Yeah. I mean, I do want to know, but I’m not sure it would be good for me. Like what if I read your book and find out all these things about you. Then I could really be on my guard. Now I don’t know all that much about you, and I’m constantly looking at you trying to figure out what you think. But if I did know more, I might take all sorts of stuff off the table or really watch what I said or didn’t say.”

“Good insight. So I guess you’ll need to figure out what you do or don’t want to do.”

“Which means you’re not going to tell me what you think.”

“I think whatever decision you make, we’ll be able to deal with the feelings that come up as a result.”