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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...

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