25. Amanda #2
“And when she didn’t?” Val prods.
He shrugs. “It confirmed that I deserve to be left behind.”
“Okay. That sounds about right.” Val says. And she does her thing where she doesn’t prompt anything else. Just waits to see who will pick up and how.
Eric is all but happy to pick up, slowly but surely unveiling all of himself in front of me. He rubs his eyes with his knuckles. When he opens them up, they’re glassy, and he’s avoiding me again.
“I don’t remember that night. I remember heading to PhD Bar, and then nothing until—” He exhales.
“But I know why.” My eyes can’t tear away from his profile.
“It was easier to tap out early. Showing I’m a shithead and not worth her time was easier to swallow than her deciding it on her own.
” He lets out a shaky breath. “Or so I thought anyway.” He hitches a shoulder.
“But I think I still wanted her to fight for me.” He stares at me.
“I knew I fucked up. But I still wanted you to fight for me. I needed you to love me through it, even when I made a mess of things.”
Val lets the silence stretch, lips pressed together, eyes glinting in that clinical expression of hers. She’s proud of how Eric’s confronting everything she throws at him. Then she turns to me gently. “Amanda, when you walked into that apartment. When you saw Eric, how did that feel for you?”
My entire body stiffens.
“We’re not here for me,” I say. “This is Eric’s thing.”
Val watches me. “Eric’s here for the relationship. You’re here for the relationship.”
I shake my head. “This isn’t couples therapy, Val. You’re working with him.”
Eric sits up straighter, alarm flickering across his face. “Hey—”
Val’s voice is measured, but she doesn’t let up. “What would it mean for you to talk about what you felt?”
I cross my arms. “I said no. That should be enough.”
“Val,” Eric says, gently, as if reminding her of something they had already discussed. “I won’t go into things that make Amanda uncomfortable. We stop when she says.”
Val lets it settle before she speaks again.
“You both need to hear what just happened,” she states carefully. “Eric needs to know what it felt like for you. He opened up to you. He walked through the painful details of how he believes he failed you. And how, even knowing you didn’t fail him, it still felt like you had.”
She pauses. Eric’s ears flush red, and his shoulders go stiff with tension.
“Amanda, you shut him down. He did something hard, he was vulnerable to you, and in trying to protect yourself, you denied him the reciprocity of vulnerability.”
This is something I do with clients all the time.
Interpretive reflection. It’s more than summarizing; it draws meaning.
A direct move that is used when dynamics are off balance, tying behavior to the pain beneath it.
It’s meant to be a gentle nudge. But when it’s turned on me, it feels surgical, crippling.
She looks at him, then back at me. “Whether you meant to or not, you reinforced his belief that he’s not deserving.”
She looks at me, then back at him. This isn’t just a reflection anymore.
This is interpretive confrontation, targeted and precise.
A strike at the softest part of Eric’s story.
The part that believes his needs are a burden unless someone else grants him permission to have them.
He’s always afraid to ask for too much. She’s trying to rewrite that script now—boundary coaching disguised as truth-telling.
Val’s eyes shine with sympathy for me, but it doesn’t stop her. “Eric needs Amanda,” she repeats. She zones in on Eric now, “And until you can stop waiting for her permission, to want, to need, to demand, neither of you is going to heal.”
“Amanda, you are allowing him to keep believing he’s not worthy.
” Val’s reframing. A classic power-flip intervention.
Turning the dynamic on its head. It’s smart, strategic, and brutally effective.
And it makes me want to scream. “You are not equals,” she says.
“Right now, Amanda, you hold all the power.” That’s a fucking textbook line.
And I hate how well it works. “You draw boundaries and speak your needs.”
Eric looks stunned. Not angry, just… exposed and guilty. It’s like he’s seeing, maybe for the first time, how much he’s allowed himself to disappear.
But all I can feel is disbelief. Me? Holding the power?
Because from where I’m sitting, he’s the one who turned me down. Over and over. Even when I swallowed my pride and tried for it again and again. He’s the one who didn’t want me. Or couldn’t. What kind of power hurts this much? So if I hold all the power, I for sure don’t want it.
Val closes the session. Conversation, she called it. Conversation, my ass. She tells us to think about the progress achieved today. None.
I’m the last one to stand. Eric lingers, but when I don’t move to leave with him, he gives me space like he always does. The door clicks shut behind him.
Val doesn’t move either. She’s still sitting there, notebook on her lap, hands still. Watching me.
“You’re on his side,” I say, before I can stop myself.
Val blinks, unsurprised, though her eyes round with sadness.
“This isn’t about sides, Amanda.”
“Yes, it is.” I cross my arms, already regretting staying back. “That wasn’t therapy. That was an ambush.”
Val closes her notebook slowly, deliberately. “You know it wasn’t.”
“That wasn’t neutral, Val.” I laugh, bitter. “And you’re my friend. Ethics aside, this wasn’t cool.”
She casts her eyes downward, mouth tightening with the close I’ll get to admission of being wrong. She then leans forward, and for the first time all hour, all the time I’ve known her really, her voice loses her practiced calm. It breaks open—a ripple, a tear, a crack of seismic dimensions.
“Eric has done everything I’ve suggested. Do you have any idea how rare that is?” she says, voice fraying at the edges. “And do you know why?”
I’m about to speak, but she doesn’t give me the opening.
“This man loves you, Amanda. Loves you. So much he’s trying to unmake himself, tear down everything that he believes about himself, all the things that kept him numb.
” She stares at me definitively and lets that sit.
“He’s been more honest with himself and made more progress in six weeks than others do in years. ”
She pauses. Her voice softens. “Do you know how few people do that? Never mind for love. But for themselves?”
The words hang between us. Undeniable.
I look at the couch Eric was just in. The way he sat forward, folded in on himself, bracing like he expected pain. Like love was supposed to hurt. Before I can talk myself out of it—
“I do know. That’s what makes this so hard,” I say, quieter now. “I—” I stop, press my lips together, and feel my throat burn. “I think I love him right back.”
The room stills. Val looks up at me, searching my face like she’s afraid I might take it back.
“But,” I whisper, “I don’t know if he can do it. If he can overcome his fears and choose me without reservations.” I close my eyes because it hurts to admit that I believe in him more than I do in myself. “Or if I can overcome mine and choose him again.”
“He’s putting in the work, Amanda,” Val whispers.
As if she’s afraid she’ll lose the moment if she raises her voice.
“He isn’t a ray of sunshine or perfect. He is flawed and wounded, but he’s committed to never hurting you like that again.
” She stands up and stretches her hand out to me.
“He is ready for you. Are you ready for him?”
I gasp at the directness of the question. “I don’t know,” I say, taking her hand.
Val studies me for a long, long moment, then she nods. “That’s okay,” she says. She wraps an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into a quiet side hug. “You don’t have to know yet.” She tightens her hold. “Just keep savoring the question.”