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7. Taking Stock of the Relationship
- University of Wisconsin Press
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142 7 Tak ing Stock of the Re la tion ship So,” said Dr. Base scu dur ing our first meet ing, “what brought you two in to see me today?” “Well, the short ver sion,” I said, “is that I made Mike go on a re al ity show and now he’s deeply re sent ful but we’re get ting mar ried in two months and we’ve wanted to do cou ples ther apy for a while any way and his in di vid ual ther a pist said you were ter rific and gave him your num ber.” “And the long ver sion?” “That,” said Mike, “is a lit tle more com pli cated.” I have been on line for an hour look ing at pic tures of my won der ful, hand some, dash ing, bril liant, charm ing hus band and think ing about how won der ful, hand some, dash ing, bril liant, and charm ing he is. Not my hus band Mike, but my new hus band, Cole. I’m sure Mike will under stand, though; he’s a rea son able man, and I’m al most pos i tive I’ll give him the ring back, so he won’t be out all that much. Cole is my new hus band be cause I saw him in a read ing of a mu si cal last week (he’s an actor) and friended him on Face book along with a mes sage tell ing him how dar ing and gen er ous I thought his per for mance had been, and then I saw him in a read ing of an other piece again yes ter day (it’s final pro ject sea son at the mu si cal Taking Stock of the Relationship 143 the a ter writ ing pro gram where I teach) and ran into him be fore hand; he thanked me for my mes sage and apol o gized for not writ ing back and I told him it was no prob lem and then he started ask ing me about my self and all I wanted to do was gaze deep into his eyes and re veal my soul to him but I was in the mid dle of help ing some stu dent with a prob lem or some thing— that’s the trou ble with stu dents; they al ways want you to take the time to teach them things—so I told him we’d talk af ter ward, but then when I came up to him af ter ward he was look ing in an other di rec tion and couldn’t see me and I was too scared to try and get his at ten tion be cause what if ac tu ally he didn’t really like me after all and if I just avoided him then he could never break my heart by re ject ing me so I ducked into the men’s room and washed my hands for five min utes think ing about what I would cook when he intro duced me to his par ents and then I came out and he was gone. (This is an in di ca tion, by the way, of how much bet ter med i cated I am than I used to be. If this had hap pened in my early thir ties, I would still have ducked into the men’s room, but in stead of spend ing those five min utes wash ing my hands I would have spent them cry ing.) I loved cou ples ther apy. Part of the rea son for this was that, rather than being an ex plo ra tion of what we’d both un wit tingly been doing to make the re la tion ship more dif fi cult and a jour ney to dis cover what each of us could do to bring the other closer, for the first month and a half it con sisted of the ther a pist tell ing Mike how he was wrong. (I am per fectly will ing to admit that this was my sub jec tive ex pe ri ence and that in fact our cou ples ther a pist may sim ply have been a bril liant tac ti cian who ac tu ally spent a month and a half tell ing me how I was wrong and mak...