A Hard Therapist is Good to Find

The funny thing about falling in love (after a really long time of lamenting love) is the reactions of my friends and family.

Of course, in the beginning they think it’s just a passing fling (since I am well known for my passing flings).  We all wonder, after such a long time, if I am even capable of the compromises that come with having a close, loving relationship.  In their defense, I’ve been saying I don’t want to be in a long-term relationship for years.   In my own defense…....  Fine.  I don’t have a defense. 

Then my friends and family start to notice things and point them out to me (to show me how wrong I’ve been).  That’s when I began to realize I might be in trouble here….

My sisters, for example, were over for a picnic to meet “Sam” for the first time.  I get a text from him saying he was a minute away and I immediately began to primp - fixing my hair and checking myself in the mirror.  My sister’s jaw drops open.  “Holy Shit! You REALLY like this guy!” she says.  ((Blank stare from me))

Soon after, I go to my mother’s house to drop something off (a few months after Sam and I had started dating). My mother takes one look at me and says, “You look great! Isn’t being in love wonderful?!  ((sigh))  I miss sex.”   ((Blank stare from me))

My friends’ reactions varied from: “This guy really seems to make you happy! Now don’t fuck this up!”   (very nice),  to a less positive reaction. The more I got to know Sam, the more I liked him.  He is sweet, affectionate and very complimentary and doesn’t care who sees it. Some of my friends assumed that I was settling for the first guy that came along after my daughter left (not true, I’ve had others) and basically told me that because I was allowing Sam to sleep and leave clothing here that “this isn’t who you said you were”.  The thing was that I was as surprised as everyone else, but it annoyed me that they felt I needed to remain the same way for the rest of my life.  (Well, excuse me for being fucking complex.) Still others found the affectionate and loving words this man said to me often to be “disgusting”. (Awwww! Someone’s kindness and MY happiness bother you? That is so sweet!  Fuck you very much.)

As for me, I was pretty much a hot mess.  The feelings were coming on fast and furious, fueled by massive quantities of sex and a lot of time spent together daily.  He was even sleeping over! (Something I always said I abhorred!!)  I didn’t want to be away from him (hell, I didn’t want to be out of bed).  I was dealing with past issues with which clearly I had previously not dealt, fighting these growing feelings and trying to talk myself out of it at every turn; not to mention all of these people close to me telling me varying opinions (opinions are like assholes….) and I knew I needed some help.  More help than I could give myself through alcohol and denial.

 So the first thing I did was to call two really good friends of mine and they both said the same thing, “WHAT are you freaking out about?? You do not need to figure out where this is going yet! Enjoy it for what it is and take it one day at a time!”   That worked …… for about a week.

I have a good friend that had been telling me for YEARS that I needed to go see a professional to deal with my disdain of all things romance.  She thought I protested too much and simply had trust/abandonment issues that I hadn’t dealt with (Ya think??) and that I could work through them with the help of a professional.  (On a side note, I have been to therapy twice before in my life.  The first was “couples therapy” with my ex-husband.  After the second session, the therapist looks at me and says “I really think you need to find your own therapist.  Your husband has many issues to work out on his own.”  [RED FLAG! RED FLAG!]) 

This time, I went to see “Bob”.  Bob is a well-known psychologist in the area and I had heard his name before as a man that doesn’t mince words and speaks very openly (Yay! I can swear!).  He sounded perfect for me! What I didn’t know at the time was that Bob specializes in sex therapy. This became evident during out first appointment.  Bob and I met twice.  The first time we talked about my boobs for about the first 20 minutes.  No really. Bob was having a field day with my past sex life and analyzing the fuck out of me and trying to figure out what was wrong with my current sex life (NOTHING).  It was almost Freudian in nature in that while I was trying to talk about my trust and intimacy issues, Bob wanted to talk about the impact growing large boobs at 15 years of age and all of the sex that I have had in my lifetime had on my trust and intimacy issues (quite a bit as it turns out, along with a few other little events like my ex-husband leaving me and our infant daughter in the middle of the night). I know it sounds like a creepy couple of therapy sessions but it actually wasn’t.  In the end, I really like Bob, and I would recommend him to others, if just for the entertainment factor alone.

So here’s the thing about therapy.  Seldom does the therapist come to any epiphanies for you.  More so, the act of going to a therapist makes you more insightful about yourself and any epiphanies are yours to find. So while Bob obsessed about my boobs and my sex life, I would leave his office and start thinking about the important shit.  If I had taken the time and effort to go to therapy, didn’t that mean that I was ready, willing and able to make the changes for which I was seeking the therapy in the first place? 

 

The answer, clearly, was “Yes”…..