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He Said, She Said, They Said?

Therapy: a way to smooth '90s relationships.

SUSAN SHAPIRIISPEGJALTO THE JEWISH NEWS

0111

OP

knew I was in love with him
because I was chain smoking,

dreaming of another man
and bringing my furniture
over to his place one piece at a
time. He knew he was in love
with me because he wasn't
sleeping well, drinking six-packs
by himself on Monday nights
and feeling anxiety about my
moving in with him.
Having spent our primes in
self-destructive relationships,
we decided this time to talk
about it honestly. I suggested
we were neurotic, r 5.
co-dependent
substance
abusers who
should seek
therapy. He
said, "You
need to have
your head ex-
amined."
There were sev-
eral approaches to
therapy, and we
discussed them 4
all. Marriage
counseling was
out since he
wasn't ready to
incorporate the
M-word into his
everyday vocabu-
lary. Joint therapy
wasn't right because of my fear
that he wouldn't want me when
he found out what I was really
like.
I vetoed massage therapy,
and he nixed group therapy.
We finally decided to go sep-
arately. I chose to meet once a
week with Patty, a Jungian psy-
chologist who was young, female
and $35 a session.
He immediately became ad-
dicted to the idea of talking
about himself and wound up ly-
ing on the couch four times a
week with Dr. Levin, a 65-year-
old Freudian psychiatrist who
was male and $2 a minute.
The payment for therapy got
more entangled than our psy-
chodramas. When I was broke
and let him pay for it, it only in-
creased the guilt I was trying to
get rid of — especially when I
was analyzing my recurrent fan-
tasy of having an affair with a
stranger.
On the other hand, when he
was low on funds and my checks
Susan Shapiro, a Bloomfield Hills
native, is a New York City
freelance writer and the author
of The Male-to-Female
Dictionary.

were miraculously coming on
time, he refused a loan. This
misplaced machismo was one of
the reasons he needed to see a
doctor to begin with. But it was
hard to be open when it hooked
right into my money/power/sex-
with-a-stranger stuff.
Armed with an intensified
awareness of our awareness, we
spent manKevenings exploring
our feelings about furniture.
"I'm uncomfortable with all
this art-deco crap you're bring-
ing into my apartment," he said.

"Maybe this hostility is real-
ly rage about your parents' di-
vorce."
"Maybe it's junk," he said,
"and you're confusing this with
your old lover's mother prob-
lem."
It's bad enough to have one
person submerged in his uncon-
scious emotions before the age
of 4, but two people cannot func-
tion on this level. We were soon
lost in psychobabble, saying
things like, "I resent your ma-
nipulative tone of voice and
won't buy into anger caused by
your defenses."
We rehashed so much of our
past there was no mystery left for
the future. I hated my parents,
but I learned to hate his more.
He'd come home and noncha-
lantly ask, "So what did you talk
about in therapy today?"
When I admitted to revealing
some of our intimacy problems,
he wasn't happy. Soon there
were four of us in bed.
"Patty says it's good for me to
be aggressive when I feel like it,"
I whispered.
"Dr. Levin says I have a right

to not want to sometimes," he
replied.
When we both started mak-
ing progress, we got competitive
about it.
"I had a great session today,"
I said. "I finally broke through
my sadness, got in touch with
my passion and started crying."
"Last week I relived a trau-
matic childhood experience,"
he bragged. "I got down on all
fours and ripped a pillow to
shreds."
Then we began resurrecting
past pain and throwing it
into each other's
faces.
When I
asked him,
"How do I
look?" he
answered,
"I don't think
it's good for me
to give you reas-
surance every
time your feel-
ings of inade-
quacy surface."
When he cut
himself shav-
ing, I said,
"Aren't you
having lunch
with your father
today?"
We argued about the
symbolism in our dreams.
"Just because the woman was
naked and next to a fountain
does not mean I want to go to
bed with her."
"Well, what was she doing in
the middle of your psyche?"
I asked. "Getting a drink of
water."
"You're the one who asked
what I dreamt! I'm only doing
this because I love you and want
it to work out!" he yelled.
"You do?" I hollered back.
"She had dark hair," he mum-
bled. "Like you."
"Why didn't you say so?" I
screamed, realizing this was all
just his counterphobic reaction
to intimacy misconnecting with
my fear of becoming one of those
dreadful women-who-love-too-
many-foolish-men-afraid-to-love-
them-back.
I twisted the cap of a bottle of
Rolling Rock even though I hat-
ed beer and turned on the foot-
ball game. He took a cigarette
from my pack and lit it from the
wrong end.
"... So maybe your green lamp
would look better in the bed-
room," he said.

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JEWISH NEWS

Harmony House founder Carl Thom in front
of the Hazel Park store circa 1947

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