Chapter 27 Perceptions
PERCEPTIONS
Michelle
Shayla could barely meet my eyes. She kept snickering and looking away. She’d been like this for the whole session, and I was getting frustrated. Normally, she was a challenge only because she struggled to see her own role in her troubled marriage. But never because she was a distracted giggler.
I decided it was time to refocus my patient on the serious nature of the hurdles she was trying to overcome.
In the last few sessions, Shayla had finally begun coming to terms with the possibility that she was going to leave her husband.
She’d even started talking to an attorney quietly, being cautious to make sure her husband didn’t know she was making plans.
While it wasn’t my job to advise her on divorce proceedings, it was very much my role to help Shayla out of the marriage with her sanity and her soul intact.
“Are you still feeling that you’re on the right track with the potential separation?”
“I think so,” Shayla said, but then stared pointedly at her silver Tiffany bracelet and began fidgeting with it. She’d never been a fidgeter.
“Are you sure? Are you having second thoughts?” If she wasn’t ready to leave him, then I didn’t want to push her.
Shayla shook her head, her curls bouncing with the movement. But she didn’t look up.
Enough.
I cleared my throat. “Is there a reason you won’t look me in the eyes?”
Shayla snapped up her gaze. “Because all I can see is The Lola now,” she blurted out.
The Lola?
Then it hit me, and my head felt like it was swimming, and my vision went blurry.
Please no. Please god no. I’d hoped there weren’t pictures of him using that on me.
We’d been on top of the Met Life Tower. Alone.
Had his friend at the hotel tipped someone off?
But that was weeks ago. There was no way someone had seen or caught that on camera, right?
“What do you mean?” I asked carefully.
Shayla shook her head and took a deep breath, then words spilled out in a wild rush.
“I’m so sorry, but you’ve taught me to be direct, you’ve taught me to speak my mind, and I can’t hold back anymore.
I know this is personal, but all I can think about now is how he must use all these toys on you.
The One, The Dream, The Lola. I have them all.
I’m in a loveless marriage; I need my BOBs.
And now you’re dating him. It’s all I can see when I look at you now, and if I don’t acknowledge it, it’s all I will ever see.
So I just have to get it out there,” she said, her eyes wide with her confessional, her hands slicing the air.
I felt as if I’d been walloped. Smacked with a pillowcase full of bricks.
I nodded curtly, accepting all that Shayla had dropped in my lap.
Lines were being crossed left and right, up and down, as my personal and professional life collided in an unexpected zigzag.
I’d counseled patients through emotional crises, through breakdowns, through divorce, death and love unreturned.
But knowing what to say next and how to handle Shayla’s TMI about me was one of the toughest challenges I’d ever faced.
I latched onto Carla’s words about refocusing the patient. I flashed back to all my coursework on how to manage over-interest in the therapist. But this was such a messy stew.
Even so, I had to wade through it. Step by step. First, address the issue professionally.
“I take it you’re referring to the Page Six item over the weekend about the man that I’m dating?” I asked, deliberately not using his name. A patient didn’t need to refer to my lover by his name, after all.
“Well. Yeah. And that picture of you guys dancing at Lincoln Center that showed up this morning on Page Six.”
That one was news to me.
I dug my fingers into my palms, and told myself it was all going to be fine.
I’d been in sessions all day and prepping for Paris.
I hadn’t been online, and hadn’t checked my work or my personal email either.
And while I felt a small ounce of relief that the photo that had appeared was one of us dancing outside, rather than of us inside on the balcony, I was still bothered that the gossip sites were following us at all.
Weren’t there far more interesting people to photograph than me and Jack, even if he’d been deemed New York City’s most eligible bachelor?
“And does it bother you to see my photo online?” I managed to ask, concentrating on my client, not on my own reaction to being in the public eye.
“It’s weird,” Shayla said loudly. “It’s completely bizarre. Honestly, I’ve always thought of you as a blank slate. Someone who existed in the little framework of this office.” She gestured to the four walls.
“And now you realize I’m both a therapist and a human being.”
Shayla nodded. “Yep.”
I took a breath, clasped my hands, and addressed the elephant in the room once more.
“So, here’s the deal. I’m a human being.
I date. I see plays and movies. I have a brother, and I have good friends.
I like to go out to dinner. I like to try new restaurants.
I enjoy fall in New York City, and I’d like to have a dog someday.
There you go. That’s me. I’m not a blank slate.
I’ve never been a blank slate,” I said, pausing to gauge Shayla’s reaction.
My client’s eyes were fixed firmly on me.
Good. “But the time we spend together is not about me. It’s about you.
And I’m not going to address any specifics of my dating life.
I do, however, want to keep working with you and helping you sort out the matters that are most important to you,” I said, my voice clear and direct.
This was how things would be done. Take it or leave it. “Can you keep doing that?”
Shayla gulped and nodded. Red bloomed across her cheeks, and her eyes turned watery. “Yes,” she squeaked out. Then, she chased it with a choppy, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said softly. “Truly, it’s fine. I’m here to help you, though, and I want nothing more than to do just that.”
“Thank you. I’m just so scattered and emotional with the divorce pending,” she said, and we returned to what mattered most during the fifty minutes we had together.
Later that morning, Clark Davidson arrived for his appointment, dressed sharply in a suit. I suspected he was a high-powered businessman, fitting this in during his day. Quickly, we dived into the marital challenges that had brought him here.
“It’s as if any true intimacy has died. My wife and I don’t have that authentic connection anymore,” he said, and his words made the hair on my arms stand on end.
I’d written a paper for a journal that used those terms. True intimacy and authentic connection.
They weren’t trademarked or coined by me, nor were they unusual words.
But they weren’t often used by my patients.
It was as if he was quoting me back to me.
“I read that in one of your papers,” he added, flashing me a grin.
I breathed a sigh of relief and smiled that he was so open about it. It made sense now. “I hope it was useful.”
“Very much so. I hope you don’t mind, but I read a bit of your research before I made the appointment.
That’s my field. I’m a market researcher, so it’s sort of a natural habit for me.
And I was impressed, so that’s why I had wanted to see you,” he said, fiddling with the wedding band on his left finger.
“And I’m glad you found me,” I said, and privately I was grateful that all he seemed to care about were my professional credentials, not my personal track record in bed. “Let’s talk some about why you feel true intimacy has died. Can you give me an example?”
He nodded several times and exhaled heavily, as if what he was about to say would be hard. “I feel like Sarah doesn’t want to have sex anymore. The other night I was—”
He hacked sharply. A loud, bark of a cough. Then came another. His hand flew to cover his mouth, and he coughed once more, like a wheezing trombone. His cheeks began turning red.
I sprang up. “Let me get you some water,” I said, and quickly headed to the door, then down the hall to the small kitchen tucked in a corner of the office suite.
I opened the fridge to grab a water bottle, but it was empty.
Crap. We’d need to replenish the supply.
I swiveled around, spotted a clean mug in the cupboard, filled it from the tap, and returned to my office, the sound of wheezing like a homing beacon guiding me back.
I handed him the cup, and he gulped most of the water down greedily.
Then he took a deep breath, and finished it off.
“You okay now?” I asked gently.
He nodded.
“Do you want more?”
He peered in the cup and tossed the rest of it back. “I think I’m better now. That was embarrassing. I’m so sorry.”
“Please don’t apologize for coughing. Shall we go back to your concerns about true intimacy?”
We chatted more, and as he shared his concerns about the lack of sex with his wife, I felt a strange sense of déjà vu.
I flashed back to my last session with Shayla.
The problems mirrored her challenges. She had even said before that her husband had a paranoid side.
Could he be so worried about trying to keep her that he was infiltrating her therapist to try to learn what sort of advice she was getting?
Could this man actually be Shayla’s husband? With a fake name?
No, I sharply admonished myself. Plenty of couples had marital woes and there was no need to jump to any conclusions, and assume Shayla’s hubby was here under false pretenses.