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.

Family Connections

“I’m kind of in a state of shock,” Sheila begins. “My sister was arrested for shoplifting. A lipstick for heaven sakes! She could have bought a million lipsticks! I don’t get it. And she doesn’t seem to be able to explain it. At least not to me.”

“You’ve never talked much about your sister,” I say to Sheila. “What’s your relationship like?”

Sheila sighs. “Pat’s two years younger than me, 36. I guess we’ve never been close. Not as kids, not now when we live less than a half hour apart. She was always difficult, always getting into trouble, creating some drama in the house. She’s very pretty. My father liked that. I guess I was jealous of her. I was the good girl, the one who always did well in school, the one who obeyed the rules. I got points for that, but her looks made her popular with the “in” girls and always got her dates with the most desirable boys. And then she married Cliff, married into all that wealth. She calmed down after that. I thought she was happy. Who knew?”

“Do you still feel jealous of your sister?”

“I guess. It seemed she was always creating problems, but still got everyone to love her. But I don’t know about this time. My parents are definitely not happy. And I can only imagine how Cliff’s family will react.”

“Does that bring you some satisfaction?”

“I wouldn’t say that to anyone but you, but yes, it does. Except she’ll probably get out of this too. And I really shouldn’t complain. I have a great career, a wonderful husband and a lovely daughter. You can’t ask for much more than that.”

“Do you feel less than your sister?”

“That’s a good question. It’s like if I think about my adult self and my adult life, I have absolutely no reason to feel less than Pat – except for her money, but that’s really not the issue for me. It’s these feelings from the past that creep in and suddenly I’m the one who gets to stay home on Saturday night, who watches my father look adoringly at my sister and, yes, I feel less than. Silly, right?”

“Not silly at all, Sheila. Our unconscious is timeless and the experiences and feelings we had at five and ten and fifteen, are as much with us, as our present day experiences and feelings.”

“Makes sense.”

“You haven’t talked at all about your mother’s feelings about you or your sister.”

“I guess that’s because I never knew how my mother felt. About anything. She was always efficient and proper and did the things she needed to do, including taking care of us, and I suppose loving us, but there was a shallowness to her feelings. Or maybe it’s that feelings were too messy. She did what she needed to do, her feelings on the shelf.”    

“So in relation to your mother, your sister and you were equal, neither of you getting very much.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I mean we may have been equal, but it’s not that we didn’t get very much.”

“Emotionally?”

“Are you saying you think we were emotionally deprived?”

“You were the good girl, your sister acted out. Maybe you were both trying to get more love and attention.”

Pause.

“I wonder if that’s why I sometimes get depressed out of the blue. It’s like everything is going along fine and suddenly there’s this black cloud.”

“That a great insight, Sheila. What you’re saying is that those childhood feelings we were talking about earlier catch up with you and suddenly you’re a kid again feeling needy and ungiven to and depressed.”

“That’s exactly right!” She pauses. “You know, that also makes me feel more sympathy towards my sister. I like that. It’s a new feeling.” Another pause.  “Do you think she shoplifted because she felt needy and thought the lipstick would make her feel better?”

“You’re saying she was trying to nurture herself with a material object, because she didn’t feel given to emotionally. That’s certainly a possibility. And I imagine there’s some anger thrown in there as well. Probably for both of you.”

“Hmm. I’ve never seen myself as an angry person, but I guess we’ll have to talk about that next time.”

“Okay. We will.”  

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.”

To Wed or Not to Wed

“I can’t understand it,” says Beverly, an attractive 48 year old attorney, passing her hand through her short, curly black hair. “I’ve been with Joanne for over 20 years and now that there’s the possibility that we might be able to get married, I’m getting cold feet. We love each other, we get along. I just don’t understand myself. I haven’t said a word to Joanne. She’s floating on air. I don’t want to burst her bubble. 

“She’s such a good person,” she continues, warmly. “I never want to hurt her, although I know I have. There were those years that I had lots of affairs. Looking for more exciting sex. But I’m really committed to Joanne now. You and I worked on it and I haven’t seen another woman for a long time. I promised Joanne I wouldn’t and I’d never go back on my word. We have a decent sex life. It’s not what it was 20 years ago, but what couple who’s been together for 20 years does?”

Beverly and I have worked together for several years. She was initially a difficult patient, challenging, argumentative, defensive. But she’s now far more thoughtful and open.   

“Does it seem to you that if you get married you’ll be more tied down, less able to turn to other women if you chose?” I ask.

“That doesn’t seem right. I promised Joanne and my word means more to me than a piece of paper.” 

We sit thoughtfully in silence. I think about the wonderful gay wedding I attended last year, the glorious celebration of love and possibility. I think about my lesbian friend who died suddenly many years ago and whose partner could not speak of her loss in the school system where she worked. I’d like Beverly to be able to get married, but that’s my desire, not necessarily hers. 

“I was thinking about my parents.” She laughs. “I do that a lot here. My sisters and I have already begun planning their 50th anniversary party. It makes me nauseous. What’s to celebrate in 50 years of misery! I still don’t understand why they’re together. My father’s this horrible, authoritarian person who bosses around my meek, mousy mother who is constantly depressed and bemoaning her life. I know, I know, they must get something out of it to have stayed together. I think they enjoy torturing each other. Besides, no one else would have either of them.” She sighs. “Am I afraid my marriage would end up like theirs?”

“That’s a good question, are you?”

“Not consciously. One of the good things about being gay was that I knew my relationship could never look like theirs, at least not literally.”

“So how about figuratively?” I ask, hoping to help get beyond the conscious.

“When my sister got married, my mother decided to tell her about her own wedding night. I mean she knew my sister wasn’t a virgin, so I don’t know why she had to tell her all that stuff. She said how painful sex was and how my father didn’t care about her, just his own pleasure. So what else is new? He takes what he wants and she cries about it. Ugh! It’s such an awful relationship.”

I think about my own parents who shared some similarities with Beverly’s. My father was explosive and tyrannical; my mother was compliant, but definitely a competent, capable person, who saw both the world and my father through rose-colored glasses. They loved each other and, although I would have disagreed, they both would have said they had an excellent marriage. Unlike Beverly, I had a mother I could identify with, without getting stuck in a passive, depressed position. For Beverly to propel herself into the world, she needed to identify with her father, an identification that has carried some negative consequences for her. 

“I was thinking, Beverly, that you said at the beginning of the session how you never wanted to hurt Joanne but that you did with sexual relationships with other women. And now you’re talking about how your father took his pleasure sexually and was unconcerned about your mother. Do you think you’re concerned that marriage will give you more of a license to hurt Joanne, sexually or some other way?”

“Hmm. I know that makes no sense logically, but I don’t know. I’ve certainly learned about the power of the unconscious. So if I get married, I’ll be more like my father – married – and therefore more likely to act like him. I’ll have to give that more thought.”

“Not to negate your possible fear of being more like your father, I’d say that your thoughtful, non-defensive interaction with me today indicates how far you’ve moved from being the authoritarian your father is.”

“Thank you. That means a lot to me.”