Crush

Chapter Twenty-Seven Ghosts Behind Bars

Twenty-Seven

Ghosts Behind Bars

As soon as I got back, Paul and I began going to couples therapy. He’d insisted on a therapist who specialized in polyamory, and I’d said fine. For the first forty minutes of the session the bespectacled older woman listened to our rundown. And then she spoke.

“It doesn’t sound like you’re in an open marriage,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Paul said. “Of course we are.”

“In an open marriage, a couple explores romantic or sexual relationships with other people as a way to enhance their own lives and their connection with each other,” the therapist said. “They bring that energy back into the relationship, and it makes them a stronger couple. They have to negotiate boundaries and jealousy, and it’s not for everyone, but it can work when there is commitment and communication. Is that what you have?”

I raised my hand. I knew the answer.

“No,” I said.

“What I’m hearing in your case is that you, Paul, had at least one serious affair. You pushed your wife to embrace a nonmonogamous lifestyle that she didn’t want. Because she missed exploring intimacy through kissing and she wanted to please you, she tried to go along with it. But because you had no clear containers or boundaries, and because you hadn’t been honest about what you’d done or what you wanted, all hell broke loose. And now you’re trying to make up for the regard you’re not getting from your wife by seeking attention from other women.”

“Young women!” I said, thrilled by how this was going.

“And you ,” she said, turning to me. I immediately regretted calling attention to myself. “Why did you put up with so many years of not kissing when that was a form of connection that mattered to you? You were setting yourself up for an explosion like this. And if you really didn’t want his conception of an open marriage, why did you go along with it? Why didn’t you stand up for yourself? And you should have known what was happening the second your feelings began for this other man. Why did you allow this relationship to unfold for so long, letting it reach this crisis point?”

It took me a second to realize that this last question wasn’t rhetorical.

“Because I was scared by how strong my feelings were?”

“So you see now, don’t you,” the therapist said, like some kind of Lieutenant Columbo, LCSW, “that these are not the motivations of a couple lovingly exploring the world side by side? You’re smart people. How is it you couldn’t see that desire is unruly? Give it an inch and it will take a mile. Let it do what it wants, and it will brush away a lifetime’s worth of care, self-denial, and strategy like a stray cobweb. Using words like ‘polyamory’ or ‘primary versus secondary partners’ keeps deep sexual and romantic attachments in check about as effectively as prison bars trap a ghost.”

Was it appropriate to tip therapists? I wondered. When they gave you really exceptional service? If they used ghost and prison analogies?

We admitted that we did see that now, yes, and we slunk out of her office like kids who’d been caught setting off stink bombs in the school hallway. United in chagrin, we started getting along better.

In our next session, the therapist had us practice saying to each other, with detailed examples of why: “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you.” We made lists of things we wanted to let go of and keep in our relationship.

I thanked him for all we’d been to each other over the years. I said that whatever else happened he could continue to put me down as his emergency contact. I would always have his back. I forgave him for his affair and for everything else and said that in one way or another we’d always be in each other’s life because of Nate and also because we’d shared so much for so long. I said that more than we assumed was almost always possible, and that we could be creative as we figured out who we would be to each other going forward.

Paul apologized for having tried to push polyamory: “Maybe loving two men so much and sleeping with them when the two men represent such different things to you is literally impossible. It’s a lot to hope for that if you’re with two men you won’t compare them, not drift away from one.” He suggested that if I would give up David he would give up dating too. We could grow old together.

After the session, Paul went out for a run in the park, and I cleaned the kitchen while talking on the phone to Veronica. She said I needed to think about what I wanted and did Paul play any part in my future: “Now is not the time for him to be asking you to sacrifice anything. If I was his friend I’d point out to him that when his wife began grappling with a profound experience with another man, that was an existential crisis.

“I’d tell him to fight for her. And fighting for her in his case would look like getting a real job, helping more at home, not telling her to stop talking to anyone—and definitely not going on a dating app or chatting with someone he cheated with before. Maybe she still leaves, but at least he will make it harder for her to walk out, and he will know that he tried everything to keep her.”

In a book of nineteenth-century sermons I’d found at a used bookstore, preacher Phillips Brooks says, “Shall not man bring his nature out into the fullest illumination, and surprise himself by the things that he might do?”

Who brought out my nature’s fullest illumination? Clearly David. But was there something about my connection to Paul that also made me better, that I should preserve? I felt I owed it to him and to myself to take that question seriously.

When Paul got home from his run, I was saved from having to talk more about our therapy session by a phone call from an editor. I logged on to my laptop and saw that my inbox was full of urgent emails. Soon I was deep into Track Changes on a manuscript. Paul started doing Duolingo on the couch to prepare for his upcoming trip to France.

“ Non, monsieur! ” he said . Ding! “ Je suis anglais! ” Ding!

I put on headphones, but I could still hear him. I was working to support us. I was trying to stop being in love with someone else, or at least to let Paul date so he could feel better about it. I started sobbing.

“What’s wrong?” Paul said. “I love you!”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t know what to say.