An Eye for an Eye

“I’ll never be able to have sex again,” sobs 22 year old Ashley, her face, buried in her hands with her long brown hair falling forwards, her voice barely audible. “I don’t know how I could have been so stupid. I know better. I’m not some dumb freshman, for God’s sake. I know you don’t get drunk at a frat party and go have unprotected sex with some guy you’ve never met before. My life is over!” she wails. 

It has been a month since Ashley confirmed that she has herpes. We have been dealing with nothing else since her diagnosis. She is understandably distraught, unable to move beyond the feeling that she has forever ruined her life.  

I think about some of the patients who have, over the years, told me about having herpes: The 60 year old woman who felt forever dirtied and punished by God. The session with a man who began by saying he needed to tell me his “secret,” and was then for so evasive, that I became afraid he was going to tell me he had committed murder. The young woman who said she contracted herpes after she had been drugged and raped, only to tell me months later that she had fabricated that story to hide her shame.  All tragic stories that forever cast a shadow over the person’s life. And now there is Ashley.

“I can’t believe I’ll never be able to have sex again. I’m only 22. I’ll never get married. Never have children.”

“Ashley, I’m by no means minimizing the pain and difficulty of having herpes, but it doesn’t mean you can’t have sex or get married or have children,” I say, trying to temper Ashley’s overwhelming feelings of despair.

“And risk doing to someone else what that asshole did to me! Never!!”

I think about the anger that almost invariably accompanies contracting herpes: the 60 year old who talked of being punished by God, my fantasy that my male patient might have committed murder, the young woman who fabricated a story of rape. Rage makes its way into the experience one way or another.

“I certainly understand your angry at that guy.”

“Yeah, I’m angry at him. Lot of good that will do me.”

“Well, it’s important that you’re aware of your anger, rather than being scared of it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re angry. You’d love to get back as this guy, but there’s really no way to do that. So you feel powerless and that makes you even more angry.”

“So, yeah, and what does all that mean?”

“You notice, Ashley, that you’re also getting angry with me, which is perfectly all right, but I think it’s an indication of how angry you feel and how easy it is to direct your anger at me or someone else.”

“Sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. It’s just important that we look at what’s happening and try to understand it because I think it’s related to why you think you can never have sex again or get married or have children. I think you’re afraid – not consciously, of course – that your anger would spill over to a new partner, that perhaps you’d want to give him herpes, just as it was given to you.”

“No way” Ashley says, shaking her head emphatically, her hair flying from side to side. “I’d never, ever want to do that to someone else.” 

“I know you’d consciously never WANT to harm someone else, but your unconscious desire for revenge is another matter. If you’re afraid of wanting to hurt, you might try to protect others from what you’re afraid is your dangerousness by depriving yourself of the pleasure of sex and marriage and children.” 

“But how could I possibly have sex with someone and know I could harm him - especially if you’re saying I want to harm him?”

Although Ashley’s question might sound as though she’s still stuck, I hear some hope for she’s at least considering the possibility of having sex again. I reply, “It’s not that you’d want to harm a new partner, it’s that you might be afraid your anger could be expressed in that way. And the more we can deal with your anger here, the more you know about your anger, the less afraid you would be of expressing it unconsciously.”

I Want Revenge!

Pat, an attractive woman is her early fifties, is angry, angry, angry! Her husband of over twenty years had an affair. In the midst of an ugly divorce she discovered that he had been unfaithful with many women throughout their marriage. Good reason to be angry. Except that they have now been divorced for five years and Pat is as angry today as she was the day she discovered his infidelity.

“My daughters don’t even want to talk to me anymore. When they see it’s me they just don’t pick up! They say they’re sick and tired of listening to it. Who else am I supposed to talk to? My friends are sick of me too. I don’t get it. What do they mean I should be over it already? Why should I be over it? What would make me get over it?”

“Actually that’s a good question, Pat, what would make you get over it?”

“When he drops dead! Or gets some horrible disease. Or loses all his money. But none of those things will happen. I’ll be dead before him. He could never suffer enough!”

“He could never suffer enough to what?”

“To make me happy. To get me my revenge. To make him feel the hurt that I felt.”

“Do you still feel that hurt, Pat?”

“What do you mean? Of course!”

“Well, you’re certainly still very angry, but I wonder if you do still feel the hurt I’m sure you did feel, or if you let yourself feel the hurt even five or six years ago.”

“Do you mean do I cry myself to sleep? No, I don’t cry myself to sleep anymore. I wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction.”

“Did you cry yourself to sleep when you first found out?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember. Why do you keep asking me all these questions?”

“Your anger takes so, so much of your energy, Pat, so much of your focus, that I wonder if it’s partly a defense, a defense against all the pain and humiliation and powerlessness you felt. I wonder if your anger helps you to feel more powerful, but also keeps you trapped with your ex-husband forever.”

“Damn right I don’t want to feel powerless. I don’t want to feel powerless ever again in my life. That jerk humiliated me in front of everyone. I want him to pay – and I don’t mean just monetarily.

“At this point, Pat, I’d say your anger is hurting you much more than your ex-husband. It’s eating you up. And, as you said, it’s driving people away from you.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“I can’t tell you what you should do, Pat, but I think being willing to look at some of the feelings you have underneath your anger – like hurt and powerlessness – might really be helpful to you.”

“Not until I get my revenge!”

“But you already said that you don’t think you’re going to get your revenge, so why would you doom yourself to anger and misery for the rest of your life?”

“I want him to suffer. I want him to suffer like I suffered.”

Much to my surprise, an image of my husband lying in his hospital bed shortly before he went into hospice, flashes through my mind. “Pat,” I ask, “Did you really, really love your husband?”

“Why did you ask me that?” she says less stridently.

“I don’t know. I thought if you really loved your husband, perhaps we could focus on that love and maybe that would bring us closer to your hurt, maybe that would help us to break through some of your defensive anger.”

She lowers her head and mumbles, “Yes, I really loved my husband. I thought we had a great marriage.” After a brief pause she shifts back again, “Ha! That’s a joke! The bastard was screwing around on me forever!”

“Pat, you know for a moment you allowed yourself to feel your sad, hurt, loving feelings. I know it’s hard for you to stay there, but I do think that’s where we need to go. You need to be able to move on in your life and you can’t do that while you’re tied to your ex with your anger and desire for revenge.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I want to do it.”

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what develops.”