You are in a difficult relationship, one that feels painful to stick with or to leave. You imagine there is something particular a psychiatrist can offer--perhaps the fresh perspective of a neutral observer. You want to know how your relationship looks from the outside. Is your partner impossible, or do you bring out the worst in others? Are you too tolerant, or too demanding? If you could decide which view to accept, you would know just how to behave. You have had it with the slow, self-directed process of psychotherapy; you want a frank and immediate response, an expert opinion.
I am sympathetic toward your wish for immediacy and plain talk. But often people who ask for advice in such matters are really looking for someone to blow up at when the rules indicate they should leave, but they dearly want to stay. Or perhaps you want permission. Sometimes a child can skate only when a parent is on the ice right beside; the parent becomes the child's nerve or guts, even the stiffness in the child's ankles. You may need what the child skater needs: additional self. If this is what you require of me, you will tell me what you already know you should do, and I will confirm your conclusions. But if you have a good supply of self, then the choice you are confronting must be a difficult one, or else you would have already made a decision.
I take it that you are in love, or have been, or think you might be in time. Love, not operatic passion: Those who are swept off their feet rarely ask questions. And since you go to the trouble to seek an expert opinion, you must value the investment of emotion and the creative effort you have put into your relationship. Intimacy matters to you, shared experiences, time together. And you imagine that people should and can exercise control in affairs of the heart.
To this picture I might add that you already know the conventional wisdom. Television, romance novels, late-night radio call-in shows, and self-help books all provide exposure to the tenets of psychotherapy. Characters advise one another continually: Walk away from abuse. Don't bet on actively reforming an alcoholic. Communicate. Compromise on practical matters. Hold fast to your sense of self. Take emotional crises to be opportunities for growth. Expect and accept imperfection. No one is a stranger to these commonplaces.
But you hope to be an exception. You feel different enough to ask whether the conventional bromides illuminate your special predicament. Perhaps you fear that you are inept at judging partners, so that when it is time for others to leave, you should stay, because you will do no better next time. Or you are more vulnerable than others, less able to bear transitions. You have been telling yourself as much, and you hope that a neutral observer will agree.
IRIS'S STORY
Here is how I imagine we come to meet. The bell rings, and you are at my office door. "Iris," I say, not concealing my surprise. My daughter used to play on the same soccer team as your nephew, and I remember admiring your spirit while your marriage and publishing career were unraveling. You assure me that you are not here for psychotherapy. You want help with a predicament.
You have not done well with men, you say. Your large-boned and angular stature, and what they call your fierceness, scares them off. Those few who are attracted to tough women don't give support when you need it, hate any sign of vulnerability--or are outright sadists. Randall seemed the sole exception. He is a man with enough confidence to enjoy forthright women and enough awareness of his own wounds to allow for frailty.
Randall courted you vigorously, tried to sweep you off your feet. He has given you the happiest two years of your life. He is sweetly handsome, separated, en route to divorce. Having grown up in a difficult family in a neighborhood that chews up its children, he now works with wayward youth. Best of all, unlike your ex-husband, who publicly humiliated you with a younger woman, Randall loves you alone.
At least that's what you thought until two weeks ago, when you went to download your e-mail. You received an extraordinary bundle of messages, all forwarded from bunny@univ.edu. You knew who this Bunny was: a touchy-feely social worker who runs a clinic Randall consults to. She had sent you the modern equivalent of the stack of letters, tied in a ribbon, deposited on the wife's dressing table. Although there was no evidence in the e-mail that Randall had slept with Bunny, he had revealed a few of your intimate secrets--enough to make you physically sick. And in his postings, Randall kept referring to you as Prickly Pear--barbed on the outside, tender within--the same term he had once used for an ex-girlfriend. You suddenly understood his m.o.: commit to one woman, then denigrate her to another.
When you felt able to stand, you left work, stopped for a moment at a florist, and drove to Randall's condo. Once there you shoved your purchase, a small cactus, into the open lips of the disk drive on his PC. For good measure, you erased his hard drive and threw his modem in the oven and set it to self-clean. You packed your clothes and bathroom paraphernalia. Then you pulled a jar of gravy from the fridge. You spread the contents onto Randall's favorite rug and left his dog Shatzi to do her worst.
Tags:
ankles,
breakup,
conclusions,
divorce,
guts,
immediacy,
listening to prozac,
marriage,
nerve,
relationship,
romantic relationship,
stiffness,
therapy,
threshold
