Ask the question.
A Friday night six years ago. I had felt shock, pain, grief. I couldn't see his wedding rings! And so I dared ask the question. His response, how could you doubt me?' was aimed like a dagger at my heart, my feelings, my love, aiming to make me feel uneasy, to doubt myself, said with a warning tone. And this was December - he was already 'giving her lifts home'...
He wasn't wearing his wedding rings because he had already gone, just too scared of her husband to make the move a physical reality. Had to wait until May for the grand revelation. For some reason - oh yes, because he was scared of her husband - he had to make me think everything was all about our son, that nothing was wrong between us.
So when the therapist said (several, many times) 'what makes you think that I...?' Well now, where have I come across a similar sidestepping and denial before?
From my annotated transcript. Therapy session February 14th 2022
My instincts tell me that if I say - I need you to tell me how you feel - this will not be good. The recording was a 'disclosure of my feelings' and it was as open and as honest as I could be. He'd said that normally everything could be talked about in therapy ' put on the table'.
Right - here's the table, the one you said that you couldn't put things on.
Dare to be honest with me!
Everything is telling me that I am only a problem. I'm no longer a person. There is a possibility that he had had feelings for me, and killed them. If that is so, well - no need for an autopsy, cause of 'death' is well understood here. But knowing would help me make sense of why I fell for him...
I am stuck, clearly still in pain.
I believe that his enactment of an avoidant-defensive response is unethical.
We are taught that non-disclosure is part of our job, but on the other hand, as therapists it is up to us to dig deep into 'our therapy culture' and ask ourselves, why do we do what we do, and is this the right way here and now? Instead here we are, fixed like flies in amber, trapped in our roles; in this room I feel crucified, nailed down.
He isn't going to be open.
But I've recovered enough from the last four years and so I am doing what I do best, 90% of my attention is engaged in listening to hear around and between his words, trying to sense the ripples and eddies of his emotion - He says and will say "This is your space, your time" but I've asked for openness. Surely it is clear that I've been open, so it can't be that I want help or encouragement to be open - I think he is being obtuse on purpose, or even unconsciously. Regardless..
I felt as if my brave and constant heart was being squeezed dry, unable to beat, unable to receive oxygen.
My request is dismissed.
So I clarify, I retrieve the meaning...I try to make it explicit.
Me - "So your question to me was, after you said something like 'potentially this conversation could be quite difficult' was something like - 'so how does it feel to have told me about your feelings' and I remember saying something like, 'well nothing has changed for me', and you replied that something has changed may change because now( meaning him) you know. That distinction feels very important for me. I am just about OK with anything that happens in life as long as I know what I think and feel, and when I don't know what I think and feel I have to stop to work it out. So by the time you got the recording, and I was here - in this room - I knew what I thought and felt. But also I really don't like secrets and things to be hidden under the surface. You asked me how it felt to come into this room, to open the door not knowing what was on the other side. It was a decision that made sense, and so it was done. The alternative was worse, I might not like facing what is on the other side, but I dislike not facing it, more"
He - So what is the alternative that you don't like more...
~ sigh! "I dislike not facing it".
I couldn't take the ambiguity he created. And if I use that word - ambiguity - I am certain it will evoke an emotive reaction, he will ask me what I don't understand, making out that I am just transgressive. In his mind he was always crystal clear and by the book and there were no undercurrents or sotto voce words or... And if I imagined that he'd had feelings for me that can only be - in this defensive logic - because I'm transgressive, wilful, because it is something I just do as a bad habit!
I talk instead about how it feels to open the door and find out what is on the other side. To watch all I need and want and hope for, crumbling, burning, blowing away...just ash. To feel my skin crawling with a million scintillating insects, a mix of elation and terror, as I focus on the still centre of the whirlpool.
I also tell him about the alternative I 'don't like more', enacted through avoidance. The alternative means I am lost, sucked down, drowning and panicking. Not being heard when I ask for the truth feels like confinement, being trapped; sensations and images of prison cells, of cold walls, of heavy chains. Crushing.
Regardless, he hears nothing of what I've said, or he ignores it.
He tells me that he is 'a therapist' so he wouldn't do anything unethical.
Ha, define unethical!
This experience has taught me that it is unethical for a therapist to be avoidant and defensive. Whatever his actual feelings were or are, about me - they will not be made clear, and so they can not be faced.
So what would have happened if I hadn't stepped back, and if I had said ' I need to know how you actually feel about me' ? There were so many things I couldn't say to him. I simply didn't feel strong enough to cope with another 'this isn't working for you and it certainly isn't working for me...' and being told to go and never come back.
But he is right, my feelings didn't just happen.
I don't just fall in love with people!
My feelings happened because of 'who he is', and I could leave it at that. But there were things he said when we first began to talk that caused me to wonder if he was attracted to me, and truly I had felt that he was crossing 'a line'! I certainly didn't feel attracted to him at the start, but after those interactions I looked again, with 'the safety off' and I started to see him and then slowly I began to melt, and then to burn. I had honestly thought that he liked me, and liked me an awful lot to dare to 'cross the line.'
Nothing could enable me to say anything about this to him right now!
Without saying all this, nothing is going to be resolved.
At this moment I don't think that he likes me at all. My request today was that he respects my feelings instead of lecturing me about how to do therapy.
And I cannot put into words exactly how important it is for me to know how he really feels...
Love in this present moment, in his room, means to be open with each other. But I am being cast as a disorderly, ignorant strumpet. Perhaps I am! But I didn't fall for the therapist, I fell for the man. I think after two years, my view of him is pretty realistic and honest! He can be a self-righteous prig, quite often. Truth is, we all can! And truth is we generally end up laughing. He has his fears, I understand that but not being open and honest with me at this time, so close to so much grief and loss in my life is potentially lethal - but he didn't spot that either.
I don't often do regret, but now, so many hours, days. months and years away from him, I wish I'd said more. Whilst at the same time I trust myself, and it is impossible for me now to remember how constrained I felt in that room, how the roles of therapist/client created useless fetters and binds. I wasn't a client, end of. I wasn't there because I thought something in me needed to be elucidated...I was in therapy because my trust in myself had been shattered.
At the time, my intuition said that if I'd been more direct in asking for his feelings, he would have asked me not to return. And as that could have killed me - I owed it to myself to keep away from that.
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